


From the Dust

by HazelBeka



Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, Angst and Feels, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Plot Driven, Tenzou has an ANBU team, Voodoo, Zombies, seals master Iruka, so how strict are those necrophilia laws?, sort of character death, world expansion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 23:58:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 71,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5353178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazelBeka/pseuds/HazelBeka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kakashi is dead and Iruka knows how to bring him back.</p><p>Tenzou’s ANBU team has been destroyed by their latest mission: to solve a series of murders in an isolated fishing village. In the aftermath, he brings back to Konoha a mysterious book of seals that no one can read. Except maybe Iruka.</p><p>But now Kakashi is dead and Iruka won’t let him stay that way. Consequences be damned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Back again with another ANBU/seals/KakaIru plotfic. To those who've read Bleed Out, you'll recognise some features of the landscape, but the fics aren't connected (as will soon become apparent). Takes place after Naruto &co graduate from the Academy, but before the chuunin exams (maybe even before the Zabuza Arc). Unlike Bleed Out, I'm writing this fic in real time rather than in advance, so don't expect the same lightning-quick update schedule, though I do write pretty quickly in general.

Iruka first laid eyes on the book one Saturday morning when he was summoned to the hokage’s office. He’d been hoping to spend the whole weekend curled up in his flat, recovering after a particularly gruelling week of teaching. His new students were almost rowdy enough to make him miss Naruto’s class – almost, but not quite. The last thing he’d expected that day was for an ANBU to turn up on his doorstep before he’d even found the willpower to get dressed and tell him that his presence was requested immediately at the Hokage Tower.

Sandaime was waiting for him with another ANBU Iruka recognised as Cat. As he stepped into the room, Iruka got the distinct impression that they’d been talking right before he came in and had abruptly stopped.

“Iruka, thank you for coming,” Sandaime said. He looked more serious than usual, and Iruka suddenly wondered if he was in trouble. “I’m sorry to interrupt your weekend, but something’s come to my attention and I need your expertise.”

Iruka relaxed. Not in trouble then. “Which expertise? Children or mission reports?”

That elicited a small smile before the hokage beckoned him forwards and gestured to a book lying on his desk.

“Neither,” he said, but didn’t expand, leaving Iruka to come to his own conclusion.

Iruka picked up the book. It was old, the cover made from leather that had once been black, the title now faded and illegible. Iruka opened it carefully, noting the weak join between the cover and spine, and fixed his eyes on the first page. He frowned. Then he flicked through several more pages and his frown grew deeper. The book was handwritten in faded ink, but not in any language Iruka had ever seen. He turned another page and then realised why Sandaime was showing it to him.

“It’s a book of seals,” he said. He glanced up at Sandaime, who was still watching him patiently. “You want me to try and interpret them?”

“Exactly.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to have the text translated? It might take me a lot of time to figure these out without the context.”

“We’ve already asked several language experts to take a look,” Cat said, speaking up for the first time. “None of them recognised it, so we think it’s written in code. We’ve sent samples of the text to Torture and Interrogation, and if they crack it, we’ll have them translate it.”

Iruka nodded slowly and turned a few more pages, casting an eye over the seals. They were complex, but he recognised some of the base symbols. Base symbols were the purest, most basic forms of the characters used in seals, and were then built upon and combined to produce more complex effects.

“These are Mist style seals,” he observed.

Cat and Sandaime exchanged a glance. “The book was found in Fire Country, but near the coast,” Cat said. The Village of the Mist was in the Land of Water, a group of islands off Fire Country’s east coast. “There’s a large immigrant population there.”

“I trust that’s not a problem?” Sandaime added.

Iruka gently closed the book. “No, they’re not actually that different from Fire seals. I might need some reference materials from the archives though.”

“I’ve already written you a permission slip.” The hokage passed him a sheet of paper. Iruka read it and had to read it again.

“Hokage-sama, are you sure this is appropriate? I mean, considering my clearance level…”

Usually, checking out restricted materials from the archive was a bureaucratic nightmare. A request form had to be filled out and a permission slip obtained for each individual item, which was only valid for forty-eight hours. The document Iruka now held gave him unlimited access to all restricted scrolls and books filed under seals for an indefinite amount of time.

“You’ve handled highly classified material before,” Sandaime said. “And this is an important project. I don’t want you to waste time with paperwork.”

“Of course,” Iruka said faintly. “Is there anything else I should know?”

The look that didn’t pass between Cat and the hokage felt as significant as the one that had. 

“Only that there is no official deadline, but I want this to be your priority,” Sandaime said. “I’m relieving you of all Mission Desk duties until further notice, though you’ll continue to teach. I’ll expect weekly reports of your progress. If anyone asks, you can tell them you’re doing some seals research, but any further details are restricted. You can only discuss your work with myself, Cat, and another ANBU, codename Snail.”

Iruka hesitated. He’d been consulted as a seals expert before, but never with such secrecy. He wanted to ask about the details Sandaime wasn’t telling him and had to bite back the question. There’d be no point in asking; if Sandaime wanted him to know, he’d have already told him.

“I understand, hokage-sama,” he said instead.

When Iruka had taken the book and left, Tenzou turned to Sandaime, shoulders stiff with disapproval.

“We should have told him.”

Sandaime sighed and lit his pipe. “Perhaps. But he’s right about his clearance level. Besides, Iruka is very skilled, especially considering how young he is. He was taught by Hiwatari Asuka, you know, before she left Konoha. I have faith that he can read the seals, even without the context.”

“It could put him in danger.”

“No one knows he has the book. If there is a threat, it won’t be to him.” Sandaime looked at Tenzou pointedly. Tenzou ignored it.

“Have you made a decision about Phoenix?”

Sandaime took a long pull of his pipe, looking pained. “It’s been a week. By the time you find her body – if you find it – it will no longer be fit for retrieval. In that case, you have my permission to deal with her remains locally, however you find appropriate.”

“Will she be…” Tenzou paused. “Replaced?”

“No. As long as neither you nor Snail object, I’m going to keep the two of you assigned to the mission. I’m passing leadership to you, and for the time being I want you to work as a two-man team.” He fixed Tenzou with a penetrating but not unkind stare. “How do you feel about that?”

“I’d prefer it that way.”

“Good. You can leave tomorrow.”

“We’ll leave today,” Tenzou said firmly. “After the funeral.”

  


* * *

  


Iruka had intended to look more thoroughly at the book when he got home, but when he stepped inside he heard the quiet sounds of someone rummaging through his kitchen and humming. Iruka smiled and went into the combined lounge and kitchen to find Kakashi making lunch, his hair damp from the shower and wearing some of the casual clothes he kept at Iruka’s flat. His face was bare, his sharingan closed without a covering, and he looked up and smiled as Iruka came into the room.

“Want a sandwich?”

“Sure.” Iruka put the book down on the counter and leaned in for a kiss. “How were the terrors?”

Kakashi grimaced. “Naruto and Sasuke spent _forty-seven minutes_ arguing about whether a kunai was pointier than a shuriken.”

Iruka laughed. “Pointier?”

“Technical term. Naruto proposed that a kunai is sharper and Sasuke countered that a shuriken has more points. It was a thrilling and heated debate.”

Kakashi glanced around for a knife and Iruka passed him one from the drawer.

“Sounds like you had a fun morning.”

“Fun,” Kakashi repeated, as if tasting the word. “You know, I’m not sure that’s _exactly_ how I’d describe it.” He pushed a plate towards Iruka and started making a second sandwich. “What about you, where have you been all morning? I was very disappointed you weren’t still in bed.”

Iruka glanced down at himself. He’d forgotten that he was wearing his shinobi uniform, and he shrugged off his vest and lay it on top of the book. “Sandaime-sama called me in. He wants me to look into some seals.”

“Oh yeah? What kind of seals is it this time?”

“Not sure,” Iruka replied, untying his hitae-ate. “I haven’t looked at them yet.”

They moved over to the breakfast bar that cordoned off the kitchen half of the room from the lounge and perched on the stools to eat lunch.

“Actually, the hokage summoned me too,” Kakashi said. “Yesterday. I’m being sent out on a mission.”

Iruka frowned. “A Team Seven mission?”

“No, the other kind.”

It was rare for jounin-sensei to be sent out on higher level missions while they were teaching, and only happened when a mission required their specific skills.

“What do they need your sharingan for?” Iruka asked.

“Nothing fun. There’s some scroll they want me to memorise.” Kakashi looked bored stiff by the very idea. Iruka hid a smile.

“At least it sounds low-risk.”

“It’s a B-rank,” Kakashi said, scandalised.

“Oh no. However will you cope?”

“I might not. It’ll probably be the death of me.”

Iruka snorted and shook his head. A thought occurred to him. “How long will you be gone?”

“A week or two,” Kakashi said, pulling a face. “I leave tomorrow morning, just me and some chuunin, in case I need help reading the long words.” He glanced at Iruka. “I asked if you could come with me but Sandaime said no.”

Iruka pressed his thigh fondly against Kakashi’s. “You really asked?”

“Yeah, of course, why wouldn’t I?” Kakashi scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “In fact, I was thinking. Maybe when the Academy is next on a break we could go somewhere. Like a hot spring or a shrine or something.”

Warmth curled in Iruka’s stomach. He’d been with Kakashi for almost a year now but they’d never been on a trip together. “I’d like that.”

After they’d eaten and Iruka was washing up the plates, he noticed Kakashi glancing at the clock.

“What time’s the funeral?” he asked lightly.

“Two.”

Iruka nodded and didn’t say _shouldn’t you be going home to get ready?_

He heard Kakashi tapping a finger on the breakfast bar, and then the scrape of the stool as he stood up. A moment later, warm arms encircled Iruka from behind, a little more tightly than usual.

Kakashi leant his cheek against Iruka’s. “Can I stay over tonight?”

Iruka turned and kissed him on the jaw. “Of course.”

  


* * *

  


Phoenix’s funeral took place in the afternoon, an open-air ceremony in the cemetery. The September air was still warm with memories of summer, but the wind, when it gusted around them, held a chill. There was no body, and therefore no grave; only a small granite memorial with the name Ban Miho and a short sentence in her native language, which Tenzou couldn’t read. There was a large photograph of Miho propped up next to the marker and a stick of incense was slowly burning to purify – what? Miho’s missing body? The earth where she wouldn’t be buried?

Most of the people paying their respects were ANBU, dressed in plain clothes. Miho’s only family was her father, who had fled with her from Mist when she was a child, from what threat Tenzou didn’t know. They’d been in the same ANBU cell for four years and Tenzou had never asked. What kind of friend did that make him?

Kakashi gravitated to his side, his bearing straighter than usual. He’d served in ANBU at the same time as Miho and had been shocked when Tenzou had given him the news of her death. That was all Tenzou had managed to say: _Miho’s dead_. And then he’d walked away before Kakashi could say a word.

“How did she die?” Kakashi asked now. 

Tenzou stared straight ahead at the photograph. “I don’t know exactly. Blood loss, by the state of the room.”

“But you didn’t find the body.” Kakashi paused, and Tenzou knew what he was about to say. “So theoretically, it could still be possible…”

“She’s dead,” Tenzou snapped. “I know how much blood the human body can cope with losing. She’s dead, Kakashi. The killer left her mask behind.”

“Do you know who killed her?”

“Not yet.”

Kakashi looked at him and his expression softened. “I’m sorry for giving you the third degree. I know this must be hard.”

“No, you’re right,” Tenzou said, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I have a duty to her, to bury her, or at least find out what happened. I’d have wanted her to do the same for me if I’d died first.”

Kakashi nodded. “You’ll find her. I have faith in you.” Maybe that should have made things better, but it didn’t.

“Senpai, I’d rather be alone right now,” Tenzou said bluntly. It was a stupid thing to say in a crowd of people, but Kakashi didn’t look offended.

“OK. You know where to find me.”

Kakashi moved away as the priest took his place beside the memorial and the funeral began. Tenzou was relieved. He didn’t want to talk about Miho, not yet before he’d given her a proper burial and brought her killer to justice. And he would, if there was any possible way. ANBU didn’t abandon each other, even in death. ANBU were family because many of them, Tenzou included, didn’t have anyone else.

When Miho’s father gave his eulogy, he translated the text on the memorial. It was a line from an old Water Country poem. _Life doesn’t end with dust, but starts again_.

The ceremony was almost over by the time Tenzou felt a hand on his arm and turned to see Kawaguchi Rikuo, the third member of Team Phoenix.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Tenzou said quietly.

Kawaguchi shrugged. He stood close enough that their shoulders brushed together, and usually Tenzou would have stepped pointedly aside to reclaim his personal space, but today he allowed it.

“I hate funerals,” Kawaguchi said. “Especially shinobi funerals. No one cries.”

It was true. Even Miho’s father was firmly dry-eyed next to the memorial, his spine rigid, his expression forcibly blank.

“It doesn’t mean we’re not sad,” Tenzou said.

The priest finished his final prayer and a slow surge began towards Miho’s father or away from the cemetery and back towards the village. Tenzou saw Kakashi among those who were leaving. It wasn’t only Kawaguchi who hated funerals, Tenzou knew. Shinobi were taught that it was shameful to display their emotions in front of others, and so for all that they encountered death, they were badly equipped to deal with grief.

“Is there a point to this?” Kawaguchi asked. “All this ceremony and she isn’t even here.”

“Funerals aren’t for the dead, they’re for the living.” Tenzou couldn’t remember who’d told him that, but the quote tasted dry in his mouth.

“We have to find her.”

“We will. Sandaime-sama’s sending us to complete the mission. Just the two of us. We’ll leave in an hour.”

Kawaguchi nodded and finally stepped away from Tenzou’s side. “Guess we’re Team Cat now.”

Tenzou threw a last glance at the photograph. “Team Phoenix sounded better.”

  


* * *

  


Once Kakashi had gone, Iruka got changed out of his uniform, made himself a cup of tea and curled up on the sofa with the book of seals. Since he’d spoken to the hokage, his curiosity had only grown. Considering Cat had been present in the office, the book had probably been retrieved on an ANBU mission, although Iruka couldn’t begin to guess what business ANBU had out by the coast. There were a couple of larger port towns by the sea, but mostly it was quiet fishing villages or uninhabited stretches of rocky cliffs. The area had a reputation for poverty and multiculturalism.

Maybe there’d been some trouble with the Water Country immigrant communities. There’d certainly been some tension during the last war, Iruka knew that much, but he couldn’t imagine what might have sparked further unrest. It was all so far away from Konoha and Iruka was ashamed to admit that he didn’t know much about it.

But he could speculate later about where the book had come from. Right now, he was much more curious about the seals. He started at the beginning of the book and flipped slowly through the worn pages. The first chapter was entirely text, most likely an introduction. Iruka skipped it grudgingly, knowing that all of the answers lay in those unreadable pages. He hoped the code-breaker at T&I was good at their job, but for Sandaime to give him the book without waiting, it was either a very difficult job or deciphering the book was more urgent than Sandaime had let on.

The second chapter contained a key to the more unusual base symbols used in the book. Base symbols were like kanji that way: there was the simple set taught in the Academy that everyone could read, and then there were more specialist or unusual characters that needed further explanation to be understood. Difficult kanji were written alongside the phonetic alphabet and difficult base symbols were defined in keys. Certain areas in seals work were more specialised than others – medical seals, for example, were notoriously difficult to read because of the specificity of the base symbols. Iruka had studiously avoided medical seals for that exact reason. Who wanted to deal with seals where at the simplest level you had a different character for each vertebrae in the human spine? No thank you.

Unfortunately, the key in this book was a long one. It covered two full pages, none of which Iruka could understand. His only hope was that he could find the symbols referenced elsewhere, otherwise he was going to find it very difficult to interpret anything. His chances of reading a seal without understanding all of the base symbols were practically zero.

Iruka marked the page with a slip of paper and moved on. Chapter Three contained some detailed depictions of seals, which were hand-drawn in black ink over fainter blue lines that represented the chakra pathways. Seals were generally drawn on chakra paper, which was specially designed paper that contained synthetic chakra pathways. These directed the chakra that a shinobi infused into the seal. The pathways used in the vast majority of chakra paper were an imitation of the pathways found in the right hand. Iruka had seen gimmicky ‘left handed paper’ for sale in the less reputable shinobi supply shops, but it didn’t actually make a difference and you had to remember to draw the seals in reverse.

The chakra pathways in this chapter weren’t for either hand. Iruka frowned and flipped forwards into Chapter Four. The pathways were different, but still not right for a hand. Was there a wider range of chakra paper available in Water Country? Iruka couldn’t imagine why there would be. Hands were used because they had the most complex chakra pathways, which was also why hand signs were used to mould chakra into jutsu. There was just so much more you could do with a hand.

In the end, Iruka had to get up and dig out the biology textbook he used in class. There was a whole chapter dedicated to the chakra circulatory system, including several diagrams. The book may have been aimed at children, but the diagrams were accurate. Iruka was sure of that. He’d taught enough Hyuugas that one of them would have pointed it out if they’d been wrong.

The chakra pathways in Chapter Three were from the chest, paying special attention to the left hand side, above the heart. Chapter Four dealt with the abdomen. Iruka went through the book, chapter by chapter, painstakingly examining the textbook as he went. There were seals based on the upper and lower back, the neck and throat, and the upper arms and thighs. Iruka made a note of each chapter’s contents in a small notebook and then sat back and frowned.

Before he could think too hard about what the use of different pathways meant, the front door opened. Kakashi usually called out when he let himself in, and Naruto – the only other person who had a key and could pass through Iruka’s wards – _always_ started talking as soon as he was inside the front door. Iruka put the book aside and waited.

Kakashi came into the room, already changed out of his mourning clothes and into casual wear. He sat down on the couch next to Iruka without a word and laid his head on Iruka’s shoulder. Iruka gently kissed his hair and Kakashi sighed.

“How was it?”

“Depressing,” Kakashi said simply. “It’s bad when the strong ones die. Makes you wonder who’ll be next.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I can’t help thinking about it though. If there’s someone out there who can take out Flamethrower Miho, then what’s so special about Sharingan Kakashi?”

“Please don’t.”

Kakashi looked up at Iruka’s tone.

“Hey, I’m sorry.” He put an arm around Iruka’s shoulders and peppered his face with kisses. “Funerals put me in a weird mood.”

Iruka leaned into him, feeling suddenly guilty for getting upset at talk of death when one of Kakashi’s friends had really died.

“What are you working on?” Kakashi asked, changing tack.

“The seals I mentioned earlier.”

“Know what they do yet?”

“No,” Iruka admitted. “The book’s written in code. Possibly code derived from a foreign language.”

“So a nice easy job then.”

“It’ll keep me busy while you’re away.”

They sat in silence for a moment and Iruka fidgeted lightly with the hem of Kakashi’s shirt.

“How did you know Miho-san?”

“We did a few missions together, back in the day. I hadn’t seen much of her recently but I heard about her a lot. She and Tenzou were close.”

Iruka had only met Tenzou a handful of times, but he liked him and thought the feeling was mutual.

“How did he take it?”

“Badly.”

“How about you? Are you really OK?”

Kakashi sighed softly through his nose and tugged Iruka’s hairband free so he could tangle his fingers in Iruka’s hair.

“You never get used to it,” he murmured. “Every time someone dies, I think it’ll hurt less next time, but then next time rolls around too soon and it never does.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

One of Kakashi’s fingers gently traced the outline of Iruka’s ear.

“Can we just sit like this for a while?”

Iruka relaxed further into Kakashi’s side and placed a kiss on his shoulder. “For as long as you want.”

  


* * *

  


Kawaguchi met Tenzou at the East Gate shortly after Tenzou arrived himself. They were both wearing full ANBU uniform, which was cumbersome to travel in due to the weight of the armour, but Tenzou was used to it. Their destination was a small fishing village called Shukunegi, where their original mission had begun and where Miho had died.

“Do you remember how long it took to get there?” Kawaguchi asked as they passed through the gates.

“Four days, but we made it back in three.”

Kawaguchi cracked his knuckles. “Three days it is.”

They set off at a run. Tenzou hated travelling this way; it was tiring and boring, but it was faster than riding in a cart or on horseback.

“I spy with my little eye,” Kawaguchi muttered, and Tenzou almost smiled.

“Don’t start that again.”

“I had a sealing scroll and in it I packed...”

“Armour,” Tenzou said automatically. “Wait, no, we’re not playing any more damn word games! You can’t possibly be that bored already.”

“Have you not met me? You’re lucky I lasted a whole five seconds.”

This time Tenzou felt the smile twitch his lips and felt a pang of guilt. How could they keep joking like everything was normal when Miho was dead?

“When we get there –” he started, but Kawaguchi cut him off.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“We don’t have to talk about that yet.”

“But we will,” Tenzou said flatly. “Last time we fucked up and paid the price. I won’t let that happen again. This time we’ll be prepared.”

Kawaguchi was silent for a moment.

“Fine. We’ll talk mission now on the condition we don’t talk about it for the whole damn journey.”

“Deal.”

“So what did Sandaime-sama say to you? Has the mission changed in any way besides finding Miho?”

Team Phoenix’s original mission had been simple but unusual. A small village had reported the theft of a body that was due to be buried the next day. This wouldn’t have necessitated ANBU intervention by itself, but the following day the body had been discovered dumped in the graveyard, naked and painted with intricate Water Country seals. It was the possibility of Mist involvement that earned the mission its S rank status, and since Miho understood Water language and culture, Team Phoenix had been assigned the mission. By the time they’d arrived, a second body had been discovered in similar circumstances. The main difference was that this victim had been alive when he’d disappeared.

“No, nothing’s changed. Our priority is still to find and stop the killer.”

“What about the seals? We’re still none the wiser on what they mean.”

“If either Iruka-sensei or T&I figure something out, Sandaime-sama will send us a message. But God know how long that’ll take. Hopefully we’ll solve the case sooner than that, then we ask the killer himself.”

“I hope so,” Kawaguchi said darkly. “I’d love to have a nice, long chat with him.”

Tenzou thought of the basement room covered in Miho’s blood. “I’d prefer a short chat.”

They entered a forest and took to the trees to avoid tripping on the roots and undergrowth. Not too far ahead they would hit the river, and Tenzou adjusted their course slightly to head towards the bridge.

“So what’s our approach?” Kawaguchi asked. “Do we go back in as ANBU or should we try something subtler?”

Tenzou weighed up the options. The problem with broadcasting their presence as ANBU was that in a village as small as Shukunegi, everyone paid attention and everyone knew where they were and what they were doing at all times. That easy flow of gossip had allowed the killer to track and control them last time. The alternative was going undercover and posing as civilian or chuunin travellers, but Tenzou wasn’t sure it would help them much for a similar reason. The villagers might pay them less attention, but strangers in town would still stand out, and if they started asking questions about the murders, the killer might put two and two together and figure out who they were.

“We’ll go as ANBU,” Tenzou eventually decided. “The village is too small for infiltration to give us an advantage, and besides, it’ll help people feel more at ease if they see we haven’t given up and abandoned them.”

“If they still have faith in us to do our jobs,” Kawaguchi said. “I wonder how many more people have died while we’ve been away.”

Two villagers had been murdered in total. As well as the first, who’d died before they arrived, a woman had disappeared while Team Phoenix had been in town. Tenzou had found her in the cellar of an abandoned cottage, her neck cleanly snapped, still clothed and without seals but covered in Miho’s blood.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Tenzou said grimly. “This time, we’re not splitting up, no matter what happens.”

Kawaguchi was silent, and Tenzou wondered if he was going to argue.

“Will that be enough?” Kawaguchi asked. “You saw the room where Miho died. It was so – neat. Besides the blood, I mean. There weren’t any signs of a struggle, like she just stood there and let herself be killed. If someone could take her out that easily, do we even stand a chance?”

“We have something Miho didn’t have.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

The need for vengeance prickled under Tenzou’s skin.

“Anger.”

  


* * *

  


Iruka woke early the next morning to lips on the back of his neck and an erection pressed against the cleft of his ass.

“It’s not even morning yet,” he mumbled.

“Of course it is,” Kakashi said, punctuating the sentence with a sharp suck on Iruka’s earlobe. “Just the pre-dawn variety. I need to be at the Hokage Tower in two hours. It’ll be embarrassing if I turn up like this.” He ground his cock against Iruka, who hummed sleepily and pressed back into him.

“We must have had sex less than twelve hours ago.”

“Twelve hours is a long time to not be fucking you.”

Iruka turned over and pressed his lips to Kakashi’s in a lazy open-mouthed kiss. Kakashi reached between his thighs, fondling Iruka’s cock until it grew hard and Iruka was moaning into his mouth.

Kakashi pushed him onto his back and Iruka’s legs fell open in invitation. The duvet slipped half onto the floor as Kakashi settled between Iruka’s thighs and began kissing a path down his body, tracing lines on Iruka’s stomach with his tongue, and then he took Iruka’s cock into his mouth. Iruka groaned and reached a hand down, and Kakashi laced their fingers together, his other hand on Iruka’s thigh, his thumb rubbing circles teasingly close to Iruka’s balls. Iruka’s hips twitched and Kakashi’s eyes flicked up to meet his, sinking his mouth slowly further down and then sucking, his cheeks hollowing obscenely.

Only when Iruka’s head fell back and his hand began squeezing Kakashi’s spasmodically did Kakashi pull back, giving Iruka’s cock a final slow lick from base to head. Then Kakashi was looming over him, watching him with a hungry expression.

“Hands and knees,” Kakashi said lowly, and Iruka obeyed. A warm hand pressed down between his shoulder blades. “Down.” Iruka lay his head on the pillow, his ass still raised in the air. He closed his eyes, his cock slick against his stomach, both hot and cool in the morning chill.

The bedside table rattled as Kakashi pulled the lube from the drawer, and Iruka listened to the faint sounds of him slicking his cock and inched his thighs wider. He could imagine the smirk on Kakashi’s face as he noticed, and then two fingers pressed into him and Iruka let out a slow breath and rocked back.

“I don’t need, ah, much prep.”

“No,” Kakashi agreed, curving his fingers and making Iruka shiver with pleasure.

The fingers stroked him once more and then slid out and Iruka felt Kakashi’s knee nudge against his calf. Then a hand curved firmly around his hip and Kakashi’s cock pushed against and into him. Iruka gripped the pillow and groaned loudly as he took Kakashi’s full length.

Kakashi leaned over him and licked the bumps of his spine. “You always feel so delicious.”

“Fuck me,” Iruka gasped. Kakashi hummed low in his throat and waited. “Please.”

Kakashi dropped a soft kiss on his shoulder blade. “Anything you want, Iruka.”

He started to move slowly, leisurely, pressing in deep each time, fingers twitching tight around Iruka’s hips with each thrust. Iruka arched his back and raised his head, but a hand gripped the back of his neck and pushed him back down.

“Stay still.” Kakashi’s voice was breathy now. He withdrew his hand and Iruka kept his cheek pressed against the pillow.

There had been a time when Iruka would have bristled at the very idea of being told what to do during sex, but there was something hypnotically sensual about Kakashi’s voice. It was low and husky with want, and the act of obeying those soft commands was erotic in itself.

“Is that good?” Kakashi asked.

“Yes. You can, ah, go harder.”

Kakashi made a rough noise of approval and changed his pace, fucking into Iruka hard enough to rock Iruka’s body forwards an inch on the mattress.

“Like that?”

“Yes, fuck, Kakashi.”

They were both panting now, and Iruka clawed at the pillow, his fingernails scratching a sound from the fabric. Kakashi reached a slick hand between Iruka’s thighs and started stroking him in time with each thrust, until Iruka’s throat hurt from the noises Kakashi rent from him and Kakashi was swearing under his breath. Then Iruka came hard into Kakashi’s hand and Kakashi gripped his waist, hot and sticky, and stuttered shallowly into his own orgasm, gasping Iruka’s name.

Iruka rolled over to collapse onto his back as soon as Kakashi pulled out, closing his eyes and becoming conscious for the first time of the thin layer of sweat on his body. He felt the mattress dip as Kakashi moved, and then Kakashi was wiping him clean with a handful of tissues. He opened his eyes to see Kakashi throw the tissues in the vague direction of the bin and miss, but couldn’t quite work up the energy for a disapproving glare.

“That was nice,” Kakashi said, and then yawned and settled down over Iruka like a blanket. Iruka groaned weakly and pushed at him.

“Too warm.”

Kakashi let himself be pushed away, but nestled into Iruka’s side and draped an arm across his chest with a sense of finality, burying his face in Iruka’s neck. It was still too warm, but Iruka knew it would be useless to protest any further. He turned and kissed Kakashi’s hair and Kakashi made a small happy noise and hooked an ankle around Iruka’s leg.

After several minutes of lying in drowsy, contented silence, Iruka peered over at the clock. The sun had risen sometime while they’d been having sex, and although Iruka didn’t know exactly when Kakashi was due to leave the village, he had a feeling that Kakashi wasn’t going to break his habit of arriving fashionably late.

“Don’t you need to start getting up?” he asked, somewhat reluctantly because he’d cooled down and was enjoying the warmth cuddled up to his side.

“Mm. Soon,” Kakashi mumbled.

“Don’t go back to sleep.”

“’m not.”

Iruka smiled fondly, suddenly overcome by a rush of affection. He turned over to lie facing Kakashi, who shifted slightly to allow it.

“I’ll miss you,” Iruka said softly.

Kakashi blinked one eye sleepily at him. “I’ll come back soon.”

Iruka kissed him on the nose. “You better.”

  


* * *

  


A second villager had disappeared and Miho was pissed.

“Right under our noses,” she ranted, flinging her hands up in outrage. “The killer knows we’re in town and he’s not scared at all.”

“What did you expect?” Kawaguchi asked. “That he’d break down and confess once he heard ANBU had come calling?”

They were in Miho’s room at the inn, which, Tenzou couldn’t help noticing, was much bigger and nicer than the twin room he’d been sharing with Kawaguchi for the last five days. Kawaguchi had settled himself on the double bed and Tenzou was leaning against the opposite wall. Miho paced between them, scowling.

“We were supposed to stop this from happening,” she said.

“It’s too late for that now,” Tenzou pointed out. “So what are we going to do about it?”

Miho stopped pacing and stood up straighter.

“Kawaguchi, go and talk to the victim’s family and friends, find out where she was last seen, where she was going, and if there’s any possibility that this isn’t our killer. Tenzou, you come with me and we’ll start a search.”

“Of where?”

“Both bodies were dumped in the graveyard. That’s on the inland side of town, and since the killer needs somewhere private to hold the victims until he dumps their bodies, he’s probably holed up somewhere outside the village border.”

“That’s a lot of ground to cover,” Kawaguchi said. “There must be hundreds of places to hide. No one lives within about five miles of here, further if you’re heading inland, and it’s all cliffs and scrubland.”

“Do you have a better suggestion?” It was a serious question.

“Not really,” Kawaguchi admitted. “But maybe talk to some of the locals before you leave. If there are any well-known haunted places that no one will set foot in, start there.”

The villagers were certainly superstitious. Tenzou had seen charms hung from most windows, and when he’d asked the innkeeper about them, he’d been told they were to ward off evil. The villagers spoke of vengeful spirits at least as often as they spoke of murder.

“Good idea,” he said.

“Yes,” Miho said. “Now, shoo! Go talk to that family and come up with some more bright ideas.”

Kawaguchi rolled his eyes and pulled his mask over his face. “Yes, Captain.”

They split up outside the inn, and Tenzou followed Miho towards the graveyard. There was an ancient shrine close by, on the outskirts of town, and a row of wooden houses, all in need of serious repair.

“I’ll take a look in the shrine,” Tenzou offered, and left Miho alone to knock on the first door, the noise loud in the silence.

The shrine was small, a single building built on the uneven land where the village started to slope up towards the cliffs, and the effect was a disconcerting lop-sidedness to the whole building. Tenzou cautiously climbed the rotting wooden steps and pushed open the door.

The room before him smelt more of smoke than incense, and there was a draft even after Tenzou had shut the door behind him. The shrine’s interior was plain and unadorned except with strips of paper which were strung up on the walls with rope as charms to ward off spirits. Tenzou was surprised to see that there were two icons, each placed reverently on a low wooden block to raise it above those who knelt to pray.

There was no one else inside, so Tenzou left and walked around to the back of the building. There was a small garden, but of the vegetable variety rather than the traditional Shinto affair. A middle-aged woman wearing a pair of faded red hakama and a white haori was crouching on the soil and digging lightly with a trowel, but she looked up as Tenzou approached and hurriedly climbed to her feet. Soil clung to legs of her hakama.

“You’re here about those deaths,” the shrine maiden said. She bowed. “Thank you for coming to help us.”

Tenzou inclined his head in return. “I’m sorry we couldn’t protect the girl who went missing last night.”

“Are you here to ask about her?”

“Sort of. My captain and I are going to search the surrounding area for her, outside the village. We wanted to know if there was anywhere we should stay away from.”

The shrine maiden nodded seriously. “It’s bad land on the cliffs. Impure. The ghosts of drowned sailors and fishermen, they wash ashore here and scale the cliffs, searching for their loved ones. We keep them out of the village with prayers and charms, but once you set foot beyond the last grave, it’s best to keep to the path, where you can, and never look back over your shoulder.”

Tenzou nodded politely. “Are there any places that are particularly haunted? Places no one in the village would dream of going?”

“The widow’s cottage,” the shrine maiden replied without hesitation. “It’s an old house on the top of Sister’s Peak, abandoned for years now, but when I was a child there was a young woman who lived there. Her husband disappeared at sea, and the day his empty boat floated back to shore she threw herself from the clifftop.”

“You think her spirit’s still there?”

“The north road passes close by the house, and people have heard her crying for her husband.” The shrine maiden touched the magatama around her neck – a comma shaped bead made from some cheap gemstone with a hole in the top, protection against evil.

“We’ll be sure to stay away from there,” Tenzou lied. “Thank you for the warning.”

He made to turn and leave, but the woman took a hurried step towards him.

“Wait. If you’re leaving the village, let me give you something to protect you.”

She led him around the side of the shrine, and Tenzou followed her up the steps and back into the small room. The woman knelt by a chest at the back of the room and withdrew a pocket-sized bag sewn from blue cloth and tied with a white ribbon. She handed it to Tenzou, who pressed the material curiously, trying to feel what was inside.

“It’s full of sea salt and sand,” the woman said, watching him. “If you accidentally glance back and see a spirit following you, open the bag. It’ll smell the sea that drowned it and flee from you.”

It made sense, in a way. Tenzou slipped the bag carefully into his pocket and bowed.

“Thank you for your generosity.” He hesitated, looking past her at the two icons. “Why are there two gods in this shrine?”

“Ah, you noticed. There used to be only one, but the Water Country people brought another from overseas.” She gestured to one of the icons, a twisting sea serpent hewn roughly from pale stone.

Tenzou had been surprised when they’d first arrived in Shukunegi at how easily the different communities intermingled. Apparently relations weren’t so smooth in some of the other coastal towns, especially towards the south, but Water Country immigrants had lived in Shukunegi for generations and parts of their language and traditions had been integrated into village life as a whole. Even the possibility of a killer from Water Country didn’t drive a wedge between them. As one Fire native had put it: _They wouldn’t try and drive us out if it were Konoha seals_.

Outside, Tenzou found Miho walking towards the shrine.

“Did you hear about the widow’s cottage?” he asked.

“Yep, plus a whole bunch of haunted caves and a sacred hill or something.” Miho waved a hand dismissively. “But we’ll start with the cottage. I spoke to a little girl on the street whose father apparently saw a woman near there last night.”

“Could be our missing person.”

“My thoughts exactly. Say, you wouldn’t happen to remember which clifftop was Sister’s Peak, would you?”

Shukunegi was nestled between two cliffs, and Tenzou pointed towards the north.

“I don’t think it’s far, but it’s all uphill.”

“Good,” Miho said, rubbing her hands together and starting to lead the way along the path that twisted past the graveyard and up into the cliffs. “Nothing like a bracing walk in the sea air. It’s colder here than Konoha, don’t you think? My father always says the seasons change faster by the sea. Right now, he’d say that autumn was being washed ashore on the waves like driftwood.”

“That’s very poetic.”

“They’re all like that in Water Country,” Miho said. “Poetic and vicious. I’d like to think I’ve broken at least one of those moulds.”

It only took half an hour to walk up to the clifftop, and then Tenzou spotted an old wooden cottage perilously close to the overhang, and they started towards it. The land up here was hilly, long grass and rocky outcrops, and the soil was mixed with sand that had blown up from the shore. They walked along the edge of the road, which was little more than a stony path. Tenzou was glad for his mask, which shielded his face from the sandy sting of the wind.

They were almost at the cottage when they heard a shout behind them, and Tenzou glanced back over his shoulder to see a young girl, maybe eight or nine, running down the road after them, waving for them to stop.

“That’s the kid I spoke to before,” Miho said.

They waited for the girl to catch up, and then waited for her to get her breath back.

“They told me to fetch one of you,” she eventually panted. “Your friend’s hurt.”

“Hurt how?” Tenzou demanded, instantly tense.

“I don’t know. I was just told to get you. He’s at the doctor’s house.”

“You go,” Miho said. “Make sure he’s OK. I might as well check this out while I’m up here and I’ll meet you back in the village.”

Tenzou hesitated. “Maybe we should both go down and come back later.”

Miho waved him off. “It’s fine. I’ll be careful, and if something’s going down in the village, the two of you can take care of it without me.”

She carried on down the road and Tenzou started back the way they’d come. He glanced down at the girl, who was watching him curiously.

“Are you all right walking back by yourself?” he asked. She nodded. “I’ll go on ahead then.”

Moving downhill was easier, and he hurried as much as the uneven ground would allow. It only took fifteen minutes until the graveyard was in sight, and then he was moving through the twisting, narrow streets, not completely sure of his route but heading downhill in the vague direction of the main square in the centre of the village.

He turned into a street he thought he recognised, and then heard someone calling his code name. Frowning, he turned and saw Kawaguchi coming towards him, unhurried and unhurt.

“Did you misplace the captain?” he asked as he reached Tenzou. “I thought the two of you would still be out searching.”

“You’re not hurt?”

Kawaguchi stared at him. “No. Why would I be?”

“A girl followed us up to the cliffs and said you were with the doctor.”

“Then she lied to you, or someone lied to her. Where’s Phoenix?”

“Still up there.” Tenzou remembered how the girl had phrased her message and felt his stomach clench. “The girl said she’d been sent to fetch just one of us.”

He started running, aware that Kawaguchi was hot on his heels. It was a trap. Miho was walking into a trap and he’d let her. Absurdly, he remembered the warning the shrine maiden had given him: _keep to the path, where you can, and never look back over your shoulder_. The girl had called out to them and Tenzou had looked back.

It took too long to navigate through the rows of houses, too long to make it up the sloping path, and by the time they reached the cottage, Tenzou was achingly aware of time, and how inevitably it passed.

The cottage door was open, and inside everything was quiet and still.

Tenzou went in first. There was only one storey, and four doors led off the narrow hallway. Kawaguchi slipped past him into the first room on the right, and Tenzou went left, into what must once have been a living room. There was a fireplace with the grate still inside it, and an old armchair, moth-eaten and mouldy. The rest of the furniture had gone, and so Tenzou’s eyes were drawn instantly to a rug, not new but in a better state than the rest of the room, which lay neatly beside the back wall. When Tenzou kicked it aside, he found a trapdoor that presumably led down to the cellar.

“In here.”

Kawaguchi was in the doorway seconds later. Tenzou gestured for him to lift the trapdoor while he readied a weapon, in case someone was waiting for them below.

The trapdoor didn’t creak when Kawaguchi lifted it; someone had recently oiled the hinges. There was a wooden ladder fixed to the wall, but using it would mean turning his back on the rest of the cellar. Tenzou pulled a small torch from his pocket and switched it on, then crouched by the hole and prepared to jump down. He couldn’t see anything in the dark space, but when he leaned closer to peer into the gloom, he caught the scent of blood.

“Something’s happened down there,” he said lowly. “Don’t follow me until I say. It might still be dangerous.”

“Got it.”

Tenzou swung himself down through the trapdoor, landing lightly in a crouch, and immediately flashed the light over the room.

There was blood all over the floor. The room was full of old crates and pieces of furniture, stacked against the walls, and in the centre lay a body with a porcelain mask covering the face. Tenzou stood very still and breathed in deep for three long beats and then counted out the exhale.

It wasn’t Miho. Now that he’d forced his brain back into gear, he took in the civilian clothes and the blonde hair spilling from underneath the mask. Miho’s hair was dark.

Tenzou threw a kunai across the room, and it pinged safely off the opposite wall, not triggering any traps. Above him, Kawaguchi shifted and the floorboards creaked. Tenzou stepped forwards, skirting around the pool of blood as best he could, and knelt by the body on the other side. Gingerly, he plucked Miho’s mask from the woman’s face and recognised the girl who’d gone missing. Her head was hanging limply from a broken neck, and Tenzou tried to find where the blood had come from. There was no wound.

“Cat?”

“Come down,” Tenzou called. He tried to say something else but his throat stuck.

He was vaguely aware of Kawaguchi dropping down through the hole the same way he had, and heard the sharp intake of breath as Kawaguchi shone his own torch over the blood.

“Is that –?”

“The missing girl.”

“Then we should…” Kawaguchi trailed off as Tenzou held up Miho’s mask. “Shit. You think someone took her?”

“She’s dead.”

Kawaguchi stepped further into the room. “What do you mean?”

Tenzou gestured at the blood. “This isn’t the girl’s. Her neck is broken. No other injuries.”

“It could be the killer’s blood.”

“She wouldn’t have left her mask.”

There was a long silence. Tenzou became aware that something was digging into his thigh. He reached into his pocket and withdrew the small blue bag the shrine maiden had given him. The ribbon was tied loosely, and he tugged the knot open; the smell of brine and salt cut weakly through the sickly scent of blood. A warning to chase evil spirits away.

It was too late. Miho was dead.

  


* * *

  


On the evening of the third day after the funeral, Tenzou and Kawaguchi reached the path that would take them down between the cliffs and back into Shukunegi. The widow’s cottage hulked against the edge of the cliff, steeped in shadow now that the sun was sinking down past the hills in the west. Tenzou stopped and stared at it, and sensed Kawaguchi pause as well. He waited for Kawaguchi to tell him to stop being morbid, to take his arm and lead him firmly down the path.

“Do you want to go back inside?” Kawaguchi asked quietly.

Tenzou slowly shook his head, and then came the hand on his elbow, and Kawaguchi steered him onwards towards the village.

“I wonder if anyone’s found her yet,” Kawaguchi said.

“I wonder if anyone else has died.”

“There was nothing we could do except go back to Konoha. Standard procedure when a cell leader dies. We spent two full days looking for her, that was enough. At least we found the book.”

“It hasn’t been much help so far.”

“Give it time. We’re not done yet.”

The winding streets were dim and shadowy, and there were few people outside. Those they passed stared and whispered. Tenzou wondered what the villagers thought of them now, after their captain had been killed and they’d run back to Konoha with their tails between their legs.

The innkeeper was perfectly polite, however, when they told him they’d be staying for a few more days, and they learnt that no one else had died or gone missing since they’d left. Miho’s body still hadn’t turned up and Tenzou felt strangely relieved. He wanted Miho found, but if she’d been buried by strangers in a strange place, he’d have felt as though he’d failed her.

“No point starting anything tonight,” Kawaguchi said when they were alone in their room – the same room they’d shared the last time they’d been here. “I’ll go ask if we can have some food brought up.”

“I’ll go,” Tenzou said, and left the room before Kawaguchi could reply.

That night, he couldn’t sleep. Eventually he sat up, sick of tossing and turning. Kawaguchi was breathing evenly in the other bed, eyes closed, expression peaceful. Tenzou watched him for a while. So this was leadership: the responsibility for another person’s life. Leading someone who trusted him deliberately into danger and trying to fumble them both through to the other side. Usually when ANBU operatives were promoted to cell leader, they received further training before they were sent out into the field with their first team, but Tenzou hadn’t had time for that. He wondered what would happen when this mission was over: would he be given a second person to risk and watch over in turn, or would someone else step into Miho’s shoes? Which would he prefer?

He slept in fits and starts throughout the night. Morning was a long time coming.

  


* * *

  


Kakashi had been gone for seventy-two hours and already Iruka was counting down the days until his return. Admittedly this would have been easier if he’d known when to expect Kakashi back, but he’d decided to take Kakashi’s longer estimate of two weeks so that he wouldn’t be disappointed if Kakashi didn’t make it back in one.

He’d finished his final class of the day three hours ago and was currently sitting cross-legged on his living room floor, a cushion beneath him and the coffee table before him covered in books, scrolls and sheets of paper. In the centre of everything was the book of Water Country seals, which was currently open at the key in Chapter Two.

The first time Iruka had gone through the book, he’d ignored the writing, knowing he wouldn’t understand it, and so it took him until the second research session to realise that there wasn’t one set of handwriting – there were two. The second was much more recent, the ink not nearly as faded, and while it was also written in a kind of code, this was a code Iruka could understand.

Among seals researchers there existed a form of shorthand, unintelligible to the uninitiated, but Iruka used it himself on a semi-regular basis when note-taking from reference materials or when developing new seals. Aside from the help this second set of notes had afforded him, there was another interesting fact about the shorthand: it was only used by shinobi in the Land of Fire. Whoever else had tried to figure out the seals in this book had been trained in Konoha.

Unfortunately, it seemed as though whoever had made the notes had more depth of experience than Iruka. Many references were phrased along the lines of: _Similar to extended animation, re: Nara, connections 4 lines from central_. Iruka had never seen the Nara clan scrolls and couldn’t imagine what ‘extended animation’ could mean. He had, however, found this particular base symbol in two different seals in the book: one using the chakra pathway for the thigh and another for the upper arm. If he extrapolated to include all four limbs, he could see the four connections – a single stroke from each seal was designed to follow a chakra pathway from the limb to the navel, where each line was then integrated into the abdominal seal.

Iruka could see this because he’d also realised that the chakra pathways from different body parts didn’t refer to any specialist chakra paper, but to the body itself. It was common knowledge that seals could be used directly on the body instead of through the medium of chakra paper, but it was a much more unusual practice. Generally, it required two people: the seals user and the seals receiver, since activating seals on one’s own body was a feat of extraordinary chakra control rarely achieved even by practised seals experts. The other possibility, for permanent seals, were seal tattoos, which were generally used for medical reasons and could be created with an in-built trigger, a sort of switch that meant the seal could be made active or inactive through a simple jutsu.

Iruka wasn’t sure whether the seals in the book were designed to be permanent or single use only, but he could see that they were all connected. They flowed together across the body, joining through the chakra pathways, complementing and feeding into each other in ways Iruka couldn’t begin to comprehend. To call it frustrating was an understatement.

Through his research and the notes the Konoha shinobi had left, Iruka had managed to loosely interpret three of the base symbols listed in the key. There was the _extended animation_ symbol, _preservation_ , and something that Iruka thought was related to _blood_.

Iruka had asked for and received permission to access the Nara clan scrolls, and with the help of a seals expert from the family, who was also a medical researcher, he’d discovered that the Nara family had a scroll on seals designed to animate inanimate objects. He imagined they were designed to complement the clan shadow jutsu, although he hadn’t yet managed to determine what was meant by ‘extended animation’, and whether it referred to extended time or extended surface area, or something he hadn’t considered. 

_Preservation_ was an archaic base symbol used for foodstuffs, which had been important before the invention of fridges and freezers, but was no longer commonly used. The specifics of the _blood_ symbol continued to evade Iruka, although he found it used in several different seals, and always in conjunction with another base symbol that wasn’t in the key because it was simple enough for even a genin to read. _Blood_ and _chakra_. The strokes of the seals combined them tightly, blending them into one single unit. What did _that_ mean?

Iruka leant back against the sofa behind him and sighed, tapping a pencil absentmindedly against the table. He was making progress, but at a snail’s pace. There was still no word from the code breaker at T&I, which Iruka assumed meant he was having even more of a tough time. Iruka had even asked around in the Konoha seals community to see if he could find the person who’d made the shorthand notes, but no one had known anything about a book of coded Water Country seals.

There was no choice. If Sandaime wanted Iruka to figure out more seals, he’d have to give him more information. Iruka glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall. He had an appointment scheduled with Sandaime for three days’ time, but that was too far away. The sooner he contextualised the seals, the sooner he could make some sense out of what he was reading.

Iruka sat thoughtfully for a moment longer and then stood up. No time like the present.

When he reached the Hokage Tower and spoke with Sandaime’s secretary, he was asked to wait, and it was forty minutes later that he was allowed to enter Sandaime’s office.

Sandaime was sitting behind his desk and shuffling paperwork about when Iruka finally entered.

“Sorry to make you wait,” Sandaime said, straightening one last pile and then giving Iruka his full attention. “How can I help you, Iruka?”

“It’s about those seals you asked me to look into.”

“Of course. One moment.”

There were two ANBU hanging back in the room as always, and now Sandaime gestured for them to leave. One slipped through the door, closing it soundlessly behind him, and the other swung himself out of the window to perch on the wall outside.

“Carry on,” Sandaime said when they were alone.

Now that it was time to ask, Iruka hesitated. But it was too late to change his mind, so he pressed forwards.

“There’s more to this mission than you’re telling me, isn’t there?” he asked.

Sandaime didn’t bat an eye. “Of course.”

“I need to know more,” Iruka said bluntly. “The base symbols are too complicated without the key. I’m getting the gist of some of the meanings, but I can’t make total sense of them without some idea of the context. If the ANBU who recovered the book saw the seals used, or if they know what kind of person owned the book, I need that information.”

Iruka was aware that he’d just made demands of the hokage, but they had an informal enough relationship that he didn’t feel he was overstepping himself. If Sandaime refused, Iruka wouldn’t push the point.

“How long do you think it would take to understand those seals with the information you currently have?” Sandaime asked.

“Months.”

Sandaime leant back in his chair, mulling over Iruka’s request. Iruka waited patiently.

“I don’t have months,” Sandaime eventually said, and Iruka tried not to let his happiness show. “All right, I’ll tell you why those seals are important, but this information is classified to the same level as the book. You do not discuss it with anyone except myself, Cat and Snail.”

“I understand.”

“That book was recovered during a homicide investigation. Two people were murdered in a fishing village and their bodies were discovered painted with seals from the book.”

Iruka frowned. “Do you think the seals killed them?”

“It could be. However, initially the ANBU team weren’t sent to catch a killer, but a grave robber. The thief stole a body that was being prepared for funeral, and it was also found covered in the seals.”

“So the seals were applied _after_ death?”

“In at least one case.”

Iruka filed that away to examine later. “Were the seals painted with ink or were they tattoos?”

Sandaime raised a hand to his face thoughtfully. “I seem to remember there was something odd about them. Let me get the file.”

He rose and went over to an old filing cabinet with a dent in the side and opened a drawer, rifling through the files inside before selecting one. Iruka watched with fascination.

“You keep active ANBU case files in a filing cabinet?”

“I have to file them somewhere.”

“But it isn’t even locked or warded!”

“I lock it before I leave the office. But I doubt anyone would want to go through my agricultural policy documentation in any case.”

The file he lay down on the desk said ‘Agriculture Dept.: Crop Theft in the Coastal Region, Section PCS’. Iruka had to hand it to Sandaime – it sounded so boring that if he’d stumbled across the file, he wouldn’t even wonder whether it was code.

Sandaime leafed through the file and extracted a mission report.

“Here we are. Let’s see, there’s a description of the seals here.” His gaze flicked along the lines of neatly-written text. “Ah, yes, it looked at first glance as though the seals had been written in blood, but on closer examination the marks were ingrained within the skin like a tattoo. Attempts were made to remove them before burial, but they couldn’t be washed away.”

“Some kind of blood tattoo?” Iruka mused. “I suppose there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work. There are some seals users who prefer to use blood even with paper seals.”

“Yes, I’ve heard it makes the seals more powerful. Is that an urban legend or is there any basis behind it?”

“Organic matter carries chakra better. Using blood doesn’t exactly make the seal more powerful, but if you’re using a particularly fiddly seal, it can help with accuracy.”

Sandaime tapped his fingers on the desk. “Could that be a reason why bodies were used? As a sort of highly conductive substitute for chakra paper?”

The same thought had occurred to Iruka. “It could be. I don’t know whether it would be possible, but it’s theoretically sound. It would allow for a much more complicated set of seals than chakra paper. I’ve never heard of anyone using a human body for seal creation, though. Not a dead body.”

“It’s an extremely disturbing idea.”

Iruka thought about seals on dead bodies. Three dead bodies. Why three?

“Were the seals identical each time?” he asked.

Sandaime scanned the mission report again, and then picked up a second sheet of paper and continued reading. “It only says here that the seals appeared similar. I’m afraid ANBU is short on seals specialists, and I imagine the team didn’t pay as much attention as you would have done. To them, it was simply a connection between the stolen body and the murders, and a possible motive. Nothing they could comprehend further.”

“Isn’t that a rather large oversight?” Iruka asked, unreasonably annoyed that the ANBU hadn’t compared the seals in more detail.

“ANBU and scholars work in a very different way,” Sandaime said calmly. “You want to understand the seals. They only want to know who made them. One answer won’t necessarily lead to the other, although I’m hoping that in this case it will.”

Iruka sighed. “I’ll do my best. Is there anything else you can tell me? Do you know who owned the book or where it came from?”

“No, unfortunately not. It was found at the side of a road by a local civilian.” Sandaime put the sheets of paper and down and looked up. “I think that’s all I can tell you.”

“It was helpful,” Iruka assured him. “Thank you.”

But not helpful enough.

  


* * *

  


Tenzou and Kawaguchi resumed their investigation the next morning by tracking down the woman who’d found the book of seals and asking her to take them to the place where she’d picked it up. The woman was young but older than Tenzou, late twenties, and spoke with a Water Country accent that had been worn down by a generation or two.

“My husband and I were coming back from visiting family in the next village,” she told them as she led them up along the clifftop path, south with the widow’s cottage at their backs. She’d already told them this on the day after Miho’s death when she’d brought them the book, but she seemed nervous in their presence and Tenzou didn’t mind her filling the silence with the story.

“And it was just lying on the road?” he asked.

“Near the road. I picked it up and saw those symbols inside, like the ones on the dead.” She reached into a pocket to touch a charm or amulet. “So my husband said I should bring it to you.”

“We’re very grateful to you for that.”

She stopped and looked around, recognising some feature of the landscape, which all seemed the same to Tenzou, and then crossed to the other side of the road and pointed down at a patch of rocky ground where the grass had failed to grow.

“Here. I found it here.”

“Thank you for showing us again,” Tenzou said. “Sorry for making you come all the way up here.”

The woman inclined her head nervously, and Tenzou noticed that she closed her eyes before turning to go back the way they’d come, making sure she wouldn’t glimpse a spirit behind her.

“We’re not going to find anything here,” Kawaguchi said once she was out of earshot.

“Maybe not,” Tenzou admitted. “But the last time we came here you said the book was the biggest clue.” He looked down at the rocks and started to recount what they’d deduced from where the book was found. “It was found the day after Phoenix died, but since there were no seals on the body we found in the cottage, it could have been dropped here earlier.”

“Not dropped,” Kawaguchi corrected him. “Someone left it here to be found. Whatever those seals mean, they’re key to the murders. The killer wouldn’t be careless enough to lose it, and he certainly wouldn’t want it to fall into our hands, so someone else must have stolen it and left it by the road. In this spot, it’s just hidden enough that it can’t be seen from a distance, but once you get close it’s obvious.”

“If someone stole it from the killer, why leave it here? Why not bring it to us directly? And why _here_ , outside the village?”

“Exactly the right questions,” Kawaguchi mused. “It must be someone close to the killer, for them to have had a chance to steal the book. Maybe an accomplice who got scared, or who was being forced or coerced from the beginning.”

“And who was afraid to be seen talking to ANBU in case the killer realised they’d turned traitor.”

“Right. As to why here, maybe we’re close to where the killer’s been painting the seals on his victims.”

Tenzou frowned. “But surely the cottage was the hideout.”

“So where did he take Phoenix?”

Tenzou turned and looked back towards the cottage, a smudge against the sky and sea from this distance, piecing together what he’d seen that day. He’d found the cellar entrance immediately, and once Miho had gone into the cottage she’d have noticed the new rug on the living room floor, just as he had. If someone had really been trying to hide the trapdoor, they could easily have done a better job.

“It was a trap from the very beginning,” he said. “The killer wasn’t after that village girl – she was just the bait. When Phoenix discovered her in the cottage, she wasn’t uncovering the killer’s hideout, she was walking into a trap disguised as a hideout.”

“The killer wanted an ANBU,” Kawaguchi said. He stared out towards the sea, thinking. Tenzou knew better than to interrupt. “The kid who told you I was hurt, did she specifically say she wanted you to come back with her?”

“No, Phoenix sent me.”

“Then it didn’t matter which ANBU. But still, why let two of you go up in the first place?” He turned to Tenzou. “Why did you go to the cottage?”

“You said we should start with the places no one in the village would go, so we asked around. The shrine maiden mentioned the cottage to me, and a child told Phoenix that a woman had been seen near there.” Tenzou suddenly remembered one more detail. “It was the same girl. She told Phoenix to go to the cottage and then had me sent back to the village.”

“Henge,” Kawaguchi said flatly. “That’s why we couldn’t track her down. No one suspects kids. They’re hard to pull off for an adult, but incredibly useful if you do it right.”

“She thought Phoenix was alone,” Tenzou continued. “Then she must have seen us together and intervened. Two ANBU would have been too much for her to handle. Or him. Whoever that child really was.”

“Probably the killer, who then followed Phoenix into the cottage and killed her. And then took her body somewhere before we turned up.”

“We’re not far from the cottage here. Maybe half a mile, maybe less.”

“Then we’re close to the real hideout. Shit, why didn’t I see it the first time?” Kawaguchi ran a hand through his hair in frustration.

“Neither of us was thinking straight. But this time we’re going to do it right. Come on.”

Tenzou stepped off the road and started walking inland. Kawaguchi followed him.

“So we’re just going to wander aimlessly until we stumble across it?” he asked.

“It’s our only option.”

“OK. Just checking that was the plan.”

The landscape before them was hilly grassland, which Tenzou knew stretched for several miles before giving way to forest and farmland. It was difficult to see any distance because the ground was so uneven, rising up into a rocky crest or hillock and blocking the horizon. The grass was long and dry, rustling around Tenzou’s calves in the breeze, and the whisper of the stalks brushing together was the only sound besides the cry of sea birds hovering overhead or nesting in the cliffs behind them.

“Do you hear that?” Kawaguchi asked. “Sounds like running water. I thought the river was further south.”

Sure enough, now that Tenzou listened closer, he could hear the rush of water beneath the sigh of the wind through the grass.

“Might be a stream. But we’re looking for something hidden, like a cave or a hollow.”

Kawaguchi started to reply, but at that moment a cry rang out somewhere close by. A human cry: female and desperate.

Tenzou brought his hands together and body flickered to the top of the nearest hillock. From up here he could see more clearly, and a movement caught his eye. The stream was closer than he’d thought – straight ahead but hidden in a shallow dip – and as he tracked it further he saw the figure of a woman crouching in the water.

“That way!”

Kawaguchi started moving in the direction he’d pointed and Tenzou followed. When the woman came into view from ground level, her back to them, kneeling in the middle of the stream, Tenzou realised with a shock that she was naked and that there were dark red seals inked over her body.

The woman cried out again, but this time it was almost a sob. The water level in the stream was shallow, less than knee deep, and she was scrubbing the water furiously over her skin, trying to wash away the marks that Tenzou had only seen on the dead before.

Kawaguchi got to her first, crouching down cautiously on the bank beside her.

“Hey, are you all right? Do you need help?”

He reached out, but then the woman looked up, her hair falling away from her face, and Kawaguchi shot back from the stream as if scorched.

Tenzou was by his side in an instant.

“What’s –?”

He saw the woman’s face and knew what was wrong.

“Help me,” Miho said.

  


* * *

  


The last pre-genin was barely out of the classroom door before the ANBU appeared noiselessly in front of Iruka’s desk. It took all of Iruka’s skill as a shinobi not to jump out of his skin. He was about to inform the ANBU that he did, in fact, have a perfectly functional door, but then noticed the tense set of the ANBU’s shoulders.

“The hokage needs to speak with you immediately.”

His voice was carefully neutral, but it was firm in a way that brooked no argument. Iruka put down the pile of students’ work he’d been holding.

“Can I pack up my things first?”

The ANBU nodded, and Iruka put his pens and a sheaf of history tests into his messenger bag. It was less than twenty-four hours since he’d spoken with Sandaime – what could have happened in that time to necessitate summoning him as soon as the Academy let out for the day?

As they walked across the square towards the Hokage Tower, Iruka wondered whether T&I had finally cracked the code for the book of seals and needed the full text to make a translation. He hoped that was the case. If something else had happened with the ANBU mission, he doubted it would be good news.

The ANBU knocked on the door to the hokage’s office and a voice from inside called for them to enter. Iruka had been expecting the meeting to be about the book of seals, and so he was surprised to see that there was another chuunin standing by the hokage’s desk, a woman he recognised as a member of the archives administrative staff. She glanced up as he entered and her expression changed from upset to distraught.

Sandaime also looked grim, and Iruka felt a whisper of unease as he crossed the room to stand in front of the desk. Behind him, the ANBU softly shut the door, but Iruka barely heard it.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

Sandaime stood up and came around the desk. He put a hand on Iruka’s arm and the unease became dread.

“Something happened this morning,” Sandaime said gently. “I wanted you to hear it from me.”

He hesitated, and in that brief moment Iruka felt a thread of hope inside him quietly snap.

“I’m sorry, Iruka,” Sandaime said. “Kakashi is dead.”


	2. Chapter Two

“Kakashi can’t be dead,” Iruka said flatly.

“It’s true.” Sandaime’s hand was still on Iruka’s arm, firm and comforting. “I wish it wasn’t, but his body was brought home this morning.”

“He told me it was a B-rank.”

“It was. Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances are always a possibility.”

Iruka looked past Sandaime to the chuunin, who was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. Her name was Fujimoto Akane. Iruka didn’t know her well, but he often saw her in passing around the Tower or when his work took him to the archives.

“You were with him.” It came out as an accusation.

“Yes, we were a two-man team for the mission.” Akane looked upset, but her voice was steady.

“Tell me what happened.”

Akane glanced at Sandaime, who nodded.

“It was an information retrieval mission,” Akane said. “Recently, an important scroll in the archives was damaged and some of the contents were lost. There are only two other known copies, and one of them is in a private collection at the Daimyo’s court. Unfortunately, we were only able to get permission to view the scroll on site, so we needed someone who could safely record the information, and Hatake-san’s sharingan was exactly right for the job. I was also assigned to the mission because I know which parts of the scroll were damaged.”

“So why couldn’t you go alone and copy the scroll by hand?”

“I only have clearance to handle forbidden material, not to access it. That’s true for all archives workers.”

“It’s also much safer not to transport information of that level on paper,” Sandaime added. “Storing it in Kakashi’s memory was an additional security measure.”

“But now you’ll have to send someone to copy it out the old-fashioned way,” Iruka said. Anger flared in him at the thought that Kakashi’s death had achieved nothing. “Why is Kakashi dead?”

“We never even made it to the court,” Akane said. “On the way, we were attacked by bounty hunters. They were targeting Hatake-san. We managed to kill one and wound the other, but Hatake-san had been hit by a poisoned senbon.”

“No.” Iruka had been managing to hold himself together, but now he felt his edges crack. “No, there is no way Kakashi could be killed by something like that. He wouldn’t die so – so _easily_.”

Akane closed her eyes. “It was quick,” she said, still in that steady voice, and Iruka wanted to make it stutter and break. “He barely suffered.”

“Was it your fault?”

“Iruka,” Sandaime said sharply, but Akane looked Iruka straight in the eye.

“No, it wasn’t. He didn’t take a hit meant for me and I didn’t get in his way. Hatake-san was very good, but he was still human. I’m sorry for your loss, Iruka-san, and I understand that you’re grieving, but I won’t let you blame me.”

Iruka took a shaky breath and bowed. “I’m sorry, that was out of line.”

Akane nodded her forgiveness. Iruka turned back to Sandaime.

“Have you told Team Seven?”

“Not yet. Would you like to be here when I do?”

Iruka hesitated and then shook his head.

“I want to see Kakashi.”

Sandaime beckoned forward the ANBU who had summoned Iruka.

“Hawk will take you down to the morgue.” Iruka turned to leave, but Sandaime held up a hand. “The funeral will take place the day after tomorrow. It’ll be a cremation, because of the sharingan. If you want to speak at the ceremony, you’re welcome to, but please inform the priest beforehand.”

Iruka had already known the funeral procedure for shinobi with bloodline limits. Their bodies were destroyed to prevent grave robbers harvesting the corpses, and funerals were carried out as quickly as possible. He’d known all of this, but he’d never considered how it would feel to have a loved one’s body hurried to destruction.

“You’ve already arranged his funeral,” he said quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Sandaime said.

Iruka nodded faintly and allowed Hawk to usher him back through the door, aware of the looks of pity Sandaime and Akane had trained on his back but unable to care.

The hospital wasn’t far from the Tower, and time seemed to both stretch and shorten as they silently crossed the distance. It took an age to reach the hospital doors, but then Iruka blinked and couldn’t quite recall how they’d made it from the entrance to the basement. They turned down a corridor lined with buzzing fluorescent lights and passed two medics who were talking with a light-heartedness that shocked Iruka, as though anything except solemnity was sacrilegious in this place.

There was another ANBU guard standing vigil outside the door to the morgue itself. Death had changed Kakashi from a person to a liability. His head would still be valuable to bounty hunters, or to the black market organ trade, where a sharingan eye was like gold dust. Iruka felt another stripe of white-hot anger at the thought, and then they passed through into cold, silent room and the anger vanished almost gently, like a candle flame in the breeze.

At the far end of the room were the cold chambers, rows of sliding compartments like a refrigerated filing cabinet for the dead. Hawk checked a list pinned to the wall and then scanned along the drawers, searching for the right number. After a moment, he rested his hand on one of the square metal doors.

“He’s here.”

Iruka nodded, but remained by the doorway as Hawk opened the drawer and pulled out a sliding table. The body lying on it was covered by a thick, white sheet. Hawk went to pull it back, but Iruka stepped forwards.

“Wait.”

Hawk paused, and Iruka took a deep, steadying breath. He felt light-headed. His footsteps sounded loud in the silence, and then he placed a hand lightly on the edge of the cloth. Hawk let his own hand drop. Iruka pulled back the sheet.

He was quiet for a very long time.

“Iruka-san,” Hawk said gently. “It’s not good to spend too long here.”

“Can I have a moment alone?”

“Yes. But only a moment. Then we need to leave.”

The door closed softly behind him and Iruka felt the first tremble, a twitch of his fingertips against the sheet. He touched Kakashi’s cheek, always so pale but now paler, and a sob caught in his throat. Then the tremors spread, up his arms and into his shoulders, and he bent over Kakashi, resting their foreheads together. Kakashi’s forehead was cold.

When the tears came, he cried in silence.

  


* * *

  


Naruto was waiting for Iruka when he got home. Iruka closed the front door behind him and leaned against it, and then looked up at a sniffling noise from further in the flat. He found Naruto curled up in Iruka’s bed, eyes bloodshot and nose running freely.

Iruka sank down on the bed next to him and Naruto buried his face in Iruka’s shirt.

“It’s not fair,” he said between muffled sobs.

“No. It’s not.”

“I thought Kakashi-sensei was too strong to die!”

Iruka closed his eyes. He also wanted to clutch at someone and cry and rant that the world wasn’t fair. Someone older and wiser who knew what to say to make everything better. He didn’t want to be that person – he couldn’t, he didn’t know how.

“No one’s too strong to die.”

“But that’s _not fair_.”

Iruka gripped him tighter. “That’s what it means to be a shinobi. People die. And sometimes they’ll be people you care about. So all you can do is try and love as many people as you can, so no matter how bad it gets, there’s always someone left.”

Naruto raised his head and scrubbed at his eyes. “But I’ll always have you. And you’ll always have me. I promise.”

Iruka kissed him on the forehead but didn’t promise anything.

“How did Sasuke and Sakura take the news?”

“They were upset, but they only met Kakashi-sensei when he started teaching us. It’s only been three months. I knew him forever ago, when he wasn’t even your boyfriend but he came over all the time.”

Iruka smiled. It felt foreign on his lips.

“He did, didn’t he? You used to get so annoyed when he turned up with some stupid excuse to visit.”

“Because he always came over when _I_ was spending time with you. And then he butted in and acted like I was the rude one for telling him to get out! Why did you ever agree to go out with him?”

“Because I love him.” The tears started again, and Iruka raised a hand to his face, as though to push them back inside. Naruto looked stricken.

“Don’t cry! Kakashi-sensei will – Kakashi-sensei is –”

Iruka pulled Naruto back against his chest and buried his face in Naruto’s hair.

“It’s OK,” he whispered. “It’ll be OK. But for now, let’s just cry for a while.”

  


* * *

  


That night, Naruto slept in the bed with him. Iruka didn’t mind. It was comforting, in a way, to have another presence beside him. If he turned to face the wall and let himself forget, he could almost pretend it was Kakashi.

He couldn’t sleep. It was past midnight and Naruto had been snoring lightly for hours, but Iruka couldn’t stop thinking. His pillow was damp, and he’d never thought he’d cry this much. When his parents had died, he’d cried every day for a long time, but then he’d grown up and thought that grief was only so raw and uncontrollable in children. He’d been wrong.

He thought about Kakashi lying in the cold chamber in the hospital morgue, and sat up. Beside him, Naruto murmured sleepily and sighed. Iruka held his head in his hands. Then he got out of bed and noiselessly left the bedroom.

The sound of the kettle was loud in the quiet flat. Iruka opened the cupboard and saw the coffee he never drank but bought for Kakashi. He took out the jar and held it for a while. The kettle boiled and clicked off, and Iruka placed the coffee gently back on the shelf and fumbled out a teabag. He left the cupboard door open.

Iruka stood and watched the tea brew. The night air was cold on his bare arms, and he thought of Kakashi coming up behind him and draping himself over Iruka, his arms around his waist, his lips pressing against Iruka’s cheek or his neck or his hair. Slowly, Iruka wrapped his arms around his waist. Then he let them drop and fished the teabag out of the cup.

He made it halfway across the kitchen before he stopped mid-step and the teacup fell from his hand, smashing on the floor and spilling hot tea across the linoleum and his bare feet. The pain was far away and unimportant.

“Extended animation,” Iruka breathed.

  


* * *

  


Tenzou instinctively made the release sign for a genjutsu, but nothing changed. Miho was still kneeling in the stream.

“Help me,” she said again, and this time her voice broke.

“You’re alive,” Tenzou said. Kawaguchi pushed past him, wading into the stream and wrapping an arm around Miho, pulling her to her feet and half carrying her out of the water.

“Shit, you’re freezing,” he said.

He let her go and Miho started scratching furiously now at the seals on her chest, leaving long red lines, and Tenzou grabbed her arm to stop her. Kawaguchi was right, she was dangerously cold.

“It’s all right,” Tenzou said. “Whatever happened, it’s all right now. We’re here.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Miho gasped. “There’s something wrong with my body. These seals are _doing_ something to me.”

Tenzou tried to look at the seals without looking at Miho’s naked body. The symbols looked the same as the ones he’d seen on the three corpses, and the water hadn’t damaged them at all. Tenzou rubbed experimentally at the markings on Miho’s shoulder. He couldn’t feel anything except her damp skin, and the seals remained just as red as before he’d touched them.

“Here.” Kawaguchi had shed his armour and pulled off his shirt, which he now held out for Miho. She took it and pulled it roughly over her head.

“We need to get you back to the village,” Tenzou said. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

Miho shook her head. “I don’t think so. But something’s _wrong_ , Tenzou!”

Tenzou had never known Miho forget to use code names when they were in uniform.

“Wrong how?” Kawaguchi asked, clipping his armour back into place and shivering at the cold metal against his bare skin.

Miho looked down at herself, trying to pinpoint the problem. “Everything is…still.”

“Still?” Kawaguchi exchanged a glance with Tenzou.

“I don’t know what I mean either,” Miho snapped. She flung her hands up in frustration. “It’s like – it’s like being in a room with a ticking clock for so long that you stop hearing the tick. So when the clock stops, you notice the silence, but you don’t understand what’s changed because you’d thought it was silent all along. So all you know is that something’s missing and you can’t figure out what it is.”

“That’s…not helpful,” Kawaguchi said.

“Let’s get you somewhere warm,” Tenzou suggested, “and then you can tell us what happened and we can figure out what’s going on.”

“No, _listen to me_. I don’t know what happened. The last thing I remember is standing outside the widow’s cottage, and the next thing I know I’m in the middle of the wilderness with no clothes and seals all over me and _something is wrong_.”

“That was over a week –” Kawaguchi started to say, but Tenzou waved him sharply into silence. The last thing he needed was for a badly timed comment to disturb Miho even more. All he wanted was to get her clothed and warm and have the doctor look her over, and everything else could wait until that was done.

“We’re going to take you back to the village,” he said firmly. “Then we can talk. But _please_ let us take care of you first.”

Miho looked as though she might argue further, but then she nodded shortly. Tenzou gently touched her arm and started to lead her back the way they’d come.

“Hang on,” Kawaguchi said. “Your tattoo’s showing.” He gestured to Miho’s left arm.

Tenzou paused. ANBU anonymity was a serious matter. Even in circumstances like these, it couldn’t be breached if there was any other option.

Privately, Tenzou thought that the ANBU tattoo was a bad idea. It was technically a seal tattoo, which allowed the hokage to summon any ANBU to him without having to dispatch a messenger to track them down. When the tattoo grew hot, it meant the ANBU in question had to drop everything and report to the hokage’s office immediately, and Tenzou understood the importance of having that measure in place. However, when it came to keeping ANBU affiliation secret, it was a pain. The standard way of hiding the tattoo was by applying a small henge over the left upper arm to give the appearance of unblemished skin, although Tenzou had known lazier shinobi to tie a bandage around the arm or to simply never wear short sleeves outside of work.

Miho brought her hands together in the seals for the henge. Nothing happened. She frowned and tried again, but the tattoo still stood out starkly against her skin, the more intricate red seals flowing around it.

“I can’t mould chakra,” she said.

“Do you feel chakra depleted?” Tenzou asked.

“No, not at all.” She stared at her palms and flexed her fingers.

“Well, Plan B then,” Kawaguchi said. He started to unravel the bandage tied around his trouser leg. “Seriously, Miho, if this is all part of some cunning plan to undress me, you could have just asked and I’d have rejected you upfront.”

“Wow, thanks,” Miho said dryly.

“You’re welcome.”

Kawaguchi tied the bandage around her arm and they started walking again. The road still wasn’t in sight, and Tenzou had a moment of disorientation where he wasn’t sure they were heading in the right direction. Everything around them looked the same: a wasteland of hills and haunted ground. Above them, the sky was endless.

Miho stopped dead without making a sound. The road was still hidden, maybe past the next rise or maybe lost forever.

“What’s wrong?” Tenzou asked urgently.

“I realised what’s wrong with my body,” Miho said. “The clock that’s stopped ticking.”

She raised a hand and placed it over her chest.

“I’m not breathing,” she said.

  


* * *

  


Iruka reached for another sheet of paper and came up with nothing. He raised his head blearily from the book, and then half turned at the sound of the bedroom door opening.

“Go back to bed, Naruto,” he said. “It’s late.”

Naruto stared at him from the hallway. “No it’s not, it’s early.”

Iruka was about to tell him not to be pedantic when he realised that the light in the room had changed quality. There was daylight around the edges of the hard, electric light. Iruka sat back against the sofa and became aware of the crick in his neck and the ache in his back.

“What time is it?”

“Eight.”

“Shit,” Iruka murmured, and then noticed Naruto’s shocked expression and clapped a hand over his mouth.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Naruto said primly. “What are you doing?”

Iruka looked down at the mess before him. He’d started working on the coffee table, but at some point he’d run out of space and pushed the table aside so that he could work on the floor. There were reference books scattered about, but mostly the tatami was covered in sheets of paper. He’d drawn out the chakra pathways for most of the body, a front and back view, and had traced out the seals from the book, lining them up, making them into the single full-body seal they were designed to be. He’d scribbled shorthand notes in the spaces, many crossed out, some of them spawning mind maps or lists of references. There were page numbers, cross references, sketches of base symbols, and copies of the shorthand notes found in the book which Iruka had then annotated himself. He felt like he’d never used his brain before, but tonight he’d finally figured out how it worked.

“I needed to think,” he said. “And I couldn’t fit all my thoughts in my head.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“Kakashi.” It was on the tip of his tongue and he half blurted it out. “I can –” He snapped his mouth shut.

Naruto came over and looked more closely at the mess on the floor.

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s all right,” Iruka murmured. “Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.” He closed his eyes and rubbed away the sleep with the heel of his hand.

“Is it?” Naruto asked in a small voice.

Iruka held out his arm and Naruto knelt down so that Iruka could pull him close and place a tired kiss to the top of his head. Naruto leaned heavily against Iruka’s side and stared at the sheets of paper, uncomprehending.

“It’ll be fine,” Iruka murmured. “I’m going to fix everything. I think I can. But I need to keep working. I only have one more day.”

“One day until what?”

Iruka squeezed Naruto more tightly. “The funeral.”

  


* * *

  


An animal or bird screeched nearby, unseen in the rolling landscape.

“Of course you’re breathing,” Tenzou said. “You’re speaking. You need breath for that.”

Miho shook her head. “That’s why I didn’t notice. I suck in air when I want to speak, but just now when we weren’t talking, I noticed it. I wasn’t breathing at all.”

“Are you feeling short of breath?” Tenzou asked, trying to understand and failing.

“No, it didn’t bother me at all. Like I’m not even...” Miho trailed off and looked down at her hand, still pressed against her chest, with an expression of dawning horror.

“What’s wrong?” Kawaguchi asked, stepping closer. “Does it hurt? Talk to us.”

Miho stared at her chest.

Tenzou put a hand on her shoulder. Water from the stream had bloomed in patches through the shirt, but the breeze was drying her rapidly. She was so cold.

“Miho?”

Miho took his hand and moved it, pressing it where hers had been until a moment ago, above her left breast, his thumb pressed against the jut of her collarbone.

“Still,” she said with a calmness that clashed horribly with the look in her eyes. “I said I felt still.”

Tenzou looked down at his hand and didn’t understand what she wanted from him.

“What are you –?”

“Can you feel it?”

He couldn’t feel anything except the cool cloth of Kawaguchi’s shirt and the firmness of Miho’s flesh underneath. And then he realised why that wasn’t right. His mind hadn’t registered it, but his hand had: the unnatural feeling of stillness.

Tenzou grabbed for Miho’s wrist and pressed his finger against the blue veins.

“What’s wrong?” Kawaguchi asked, alarmed. Tenzou ignored him.

He gave up on the wrist and dug two fingers under Miho’s jaw. She tilted her head up, and Tenzou finally noticed the new pink scar beneath the seals. It stretched from ear to ear like a slit throat.

Tenzou jerked away and took several rapid steps back, dragging Kawaguchi with him, almost stumbling in his haste. Kawaguchi stared between them.

“Would someone mind telling me what the fuck’s going on?”

“She has no pulse,” Tenzou said flatly. “Miho died. We know she died.”

“What are you talking about? She’s standing _right there_.” Kawaguchi tried to pull away and Tenzou yanked him back, hard.

Miho watched them silently.

“You’re not Miho,” Tenzou said. His voice was shaking. “Who are you? _What_ are you?”

“I’m Ban Miho,” Miho said. “ANBU code name Phoenix. Jounin rank, ANBU captain, shinobi number 3285. Tenzou, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m me. I swear it.”

“You can’t be her. Miho died eleven days ago in the widow’s cottage. I saw the blood. We had a fucking _funeral_.”

Miho closed her eyes and buried her hands in her hair.

“I can’t be dead. You’ve made some mistake.”

“I’ve heard rumours of a resurrection jutsu,” Tenzou said, grasping for something, anything, that could explain this. “But it doesn’t really raise the dead. It’s like a shadow clone, a physical being that thinks it’s someone who died, but it’s only an echo.”

“ _I am Ban Miho_.”

The scream ripped apart the stillness of the landscape and two birds rose in a flurry of beating wings from a nearby hillock and flew away.

“Maybe you’re right,” Miho said, quiet in the ensuing silence. “Maybe something awful happened to me. I don’t know, I can’t remember anything, but I swear to you I’m still me.”

Tenzou wanted to believe her. He wanted it more than anything.

“Tenzou,” Kawaguchi said quietly. “You’re hurting me.”

Tenzou became aware that he was still gripping Kawaguchi’s arm like a vice, fingernails buried in the flesh. He uncurled his fingers but kept his hand close. Kawaguchi didn’t try and move.

“She knew your name,” Kawaguchi said. “No one outside of ANBU knows who you are. How do you explain that if she isn’t Miho?”

Miho turned her gaze on him. Tenzou watched her eyes. They didn’t look dead. Miho blinked once, and then again. Corpses stared blankly; they had no need to blink.

“Genjutsu,” Tenzou suggested. “Or some other interrogation technique.”

Kawaguchi paused, thinking something through. “No,” he said slowly. “It’s not plausible within the time frame. There was only about half an hour between you leaving Miho and the two of us finding that girl’s body. If Miho died in the cottage, there was no time to subdue her, interrogate her, and then murder her and remove the evidence.”

“What if there were two enemies? And the blood belonged to one of them.”

“That would mean the second killer had to spirit away two dead or unconscious bodies. No one could do that in one go. Besides, didn’t you notice? There was no blood trail leading out of the cottage.”

Tenzou didn’t take his eyes off Miho, but he saw her make an expression that he was sure was mirrored on his own face.

“What does _that_ mean?” Miho asked.

Kawaguchi sighed, the way he always did when he thought they were being slow, and it was so normal that Tenzou relaxed fractionally. “It means that the killer took precautions so as not to leave a trail. They wrapped the body in something. Not only would that have taken up more time, but considering how little materials were left in the cottage, it probably means they brought something in advance. They were prepared to transport a body.”

“So it wasn’t an accidental death,” Tenzou concluded. “Whatever happened in that room, it was premeditated murder.”

“I died,” Miho said. She looked down at herself. “You’re telling me I died. Almost two weeks ago.”

Kawaguchi tried to take a step forwards, but Tenzou threw an arm in front of him.

“Seriously?” Kawaguchi asked. “Tenzou, it’s her, it’s Miho. It _must_ be. There’s no other way she could have known your name.”

“There’s no way she could possibly be alive,” Tenzou countered. “But she’s here.”

“So let’s give her a physical and try and figure out what’s going on.”

Tenzou was still wary, but Kawaguchi had a point. They couldn’t stand here and talk forever.

“You stay here,” he said to Kawaguchi. “I’ll do it.”

“You know, I already have an overprotective mother. The position isn’t open.”

“That’s a direct order,” Tenzou snapped.

Kawaguchi folded his arms tightly but didn’t argue.

“So you’re captain now,” Miho said as he approached. She stood with her hands by her sides, muscles relaxed, a pose meant to indicate she was harmless. “Where’s your third teammate?”

“There isn’t one.”

Tenzou checked her wrist again. There was no mistaking it: Miho’s heart wasn’t beating. He lifted her chin and drew a finger along the scar.

“What is it?” Miho asked.

“Your throat was slit and then healed.” Tenzou frowned. “You can’t cast a healing jutsu on the dead. It doesn’t work.”

“I think we can safely assume that the normal rules don’t apply right now.”

Tenzou sorted a mental list of symptoms. No heartbeat, no breathing, but able to move, speak and, for some reason, blink. Although, on second thoughts, this made sense. The eyes of corpses dried out. Their mouths too.

“Stick your tongue out,” Tenzou said.

Miho frowned but obeyed. Tenzou touched her tongue. It was wet.

“Some of your bodily functions are still working,” he said. “You blink, you salivate. Why that but not breathing?”

“Because they’re useful,” Kawaguchi chipped in. “What’s the point of raising someone from the dead if they’re blind and mute? Can’t see or speak if you’re all dried out. But if you can animate the limbs without oxygen, there’s no need for constant breathing. Air becomes useless except for speaking.”

“But how can I think and – and function as a person if there’s no blood flow to my brain?” Miho demanded.

Kawaguchi shrugged. “I guess we just proved the existence of the human soul.”

  


* * *

  


The seals in the book were only a model, Iruka finally realised as he tapped the end of his pencil on the old pages and read one of the shorthand notes for the hundredth time. The Konoha shinobi hadn’t simply been trying to interpret the seals, he’d also been identifying what needed to be changed. The seals couldn’t simply be applied to the body, they had to be personalised. That’s what he’d been missing all this time. Iruka flipped the pencil around and started poring furiously over his diagram.

The front door slammed and Naruto’s voice called out, “I’m home.”

Iruka glanced up as Naruto came into the kitchen. “When did you go out?”

There was a pause. “Not long ago. I told you I was leaving.”

“Oh.” Iruka found the note he’d been searching for and scribbled another annotation. “Where did you go? Did you have afternoon training today?”

Only when he registered Naruto’s silence did he realise why that couldn’t be.

“It’s OK,” Naruto said quietly. “I keep forgetting too.”

He put a plastic bag on the breakfast bar and started unpacking plastic containers with Ichiraku’s logo stamped on the sides. Iruka became aware of the delicious smell of ramen and of the stabbing pains in his stomach.

“Is it lunchtime already?”

The look Naruto gave him this time was almost alarmed.

“It’s six in the evening,” he said. “You didn’t eat lunch. I made you some but you kept saying you’d eat it in a minute and you never did.”

That rang a bell. Iruka had a vague memory of a moving a bowl of soup, long cold, from the coffee table, afraid that it would spill and damage his notes. He’d put it on the kitchen counter and forgotten about it.

But when had it got so late? Iruka glanced at the clock, panicked. Naruto had been right, it was already six. The day was almost over and he’d accomplished nothing. He still didn’t understand the seals well enough to use them, and he was running out of time. He tried to calculate how long he had until the cremation, but exhaustion and hunger were slowing down his brain. The memory escaped him.

“What time’s the funeral tomorrow?”

“Eleven.”

“Shit,” Iruka mumbled, and snatched up the book, flicking desperately through the pages, now marked with colour coded strips of paper. “That’s not enough time. I should have finished this hours ago.”

“Iruka-sensei,” Naruto said loudly, and Iruka looked up, annoyed.

“Naruto, I’m busy, I don’t have time to talk.”

“Please eat something. You’ve been working all day. _Please_.”

Iruka’s stomach gave another painful twinge and emitted a growl. Iruka looked down at it in despair.

“I don’t have _time_ to eat.” It came out like a plea.

“You have to,” Naruto said. His voice had a tremor in it now, and Iruka looked at him properly for the first time all day. “Iruka-sensei, please.”

Iruka stood up and went into the kitchen. He glanced back at his work even as he went, but he couldn’t let Naruto sound like that. Like he was frightened and alone.

“I’m sorry,” Iruka said softly as he sat on the stool next to Naruto’s. “You’re right. I should eat. Thank you for buying the food.”

“I took the money from your wallet. You said it was OK.”

“Yes, I remember now,” Iruka lied. He ruffled Naruto’s hair. “I’ve been a bit distracted today, I know, but it’ll be over after tonight.” He fought not to glance at his work again, aware that Naruto was watching him closely.

“What happens after tonight?”

Iruka hesitated. “I’m working on a project. And I have a deadline for tomorrow morning.”

“Is it to do with Kakashi-sensei?”

“Yes.”

Naruto didn’t look happy. He didn’t understand, but Iruka didn’t try to explain it to him. He knew how it would sound. _I’m going to bring Kakashi back to life_. Another shot of adrenaline buzzed through his veins at the thought.

“Are you all right?” Naruto asked. “I can get someone, if you want me to.”

“No,” Iruka said, too quickly. “No, don’t do that. Just wait until tomorrow. Everything will be all right then. I promise.”

Naruto reached over and took the lid off Iruka’s container of ramen. He snapped apart the disposable chopsticks and placed them in Iruka’s hand.

“You don’t have to promise,” he said. “It’s OK if we’re still sad tomorrow. It won’t be your fault.”

Iruka’s fingers closed around the chopsticks and he sized up the bowl, mentally calculating how long it would take to eat. He wished he could see the clock from here, so he could see how much time he’d already lost since Naruto had come home.

“It’ll be all right,” he said again, dipping his chopsticks into the broth. “It has to be.”

  


* * *

  


There was a sound from the direction of the unseen road: the clop of a horse’s hooves and the grind of a cart’s wooden wheels against the stony path. Miho tensed and pulled at the hem of Kawaguchi’s shirt, trying to cover herself as much as possible.

They didn’t speak until the cart had rumbled by. Tenzou wondered if the people on the road had heard them talking, or Miho’s earlier shout. He imagined trembling villagers clutching their charms and keeping their heads held stiff, their eyes trained resolutely forwards so as not to catch a glimpse of the spirits fighting on the clifftop.

“There’s one more thing I want to know,” Tenzou said when the rattling cart was almost out of earshot. “I want you tell me something that only Miho could know.”

“Anything?” Miho asked.

Tenzou thought. “Tell us what happened the day we first became a team. That conversation we had in the meeting room.”

Miho smiled fondly at the memory. “I’d just been promoted to captain and you two were my first ANBU team. I was running late that day and so I didn’t have time to look at the documentation I’d grabbed from the admin office on the way. You were both already in the room when I got there and I thought ‘there’s no way this is my team. I use super strength fire jutsu and they’ve put me with the wood guy? How does _that_ make sense?’ And I think the first thing I said to you as captain was ‘not _you two_ ’.”

Tenzou’s lips quirked up despite himself. He remembered the look of bewilderment on Miho’s face and the horror that had replaced it after she’d realised what she’d blurted out.

“And then I felt so guilty,” Miho continued. “Because of the look you gave me, Tenzou. Like I’d just kicked your puppy. And then I think Kawaguchi pulled something from laughing too hard.”

“You get used to a certain reaction when your code name is Snail,” Kawaguchi said, and Tenzou could hear the grin in his voice. “Though most people are less honest about it.”

“God, I’m still embarrassed four years down the line,” Miho groaned. “Why’d you have to make me talk about that of all things?”

“It’s one of my favourite Team Phoenix memories,” Tenzou said.

Miho gave him a hesitant half smile. “So did I pass your test? Do you believe I’m really me?”

“Yes,” Tenzou said. “No enemy could have known about that. Miho, I don’t know what’s happened to you, but we’re going to find out, and then we’re going to fix you.”

“Can we get her some clothes first?” Kawaguchi piped up. “I want my shirt back. Also, can I move yet?”

Tenzou rolled his eyes. “If you must.”

“Good. I was getting lonely over here.”

They didn’t see anyone on the clifftop road as they headed back towards Shukunegi, but Miho stretched the shirt hem down as far as it would go. Tenzou felt bad for her, but he didn’t know how else he could help except to get her back to the inn as quickly as possible. The plan was to walk down to just outside the village border, and then Tenzou would stay with Miho somewhere out of sight while Kawaguchi went on to the inn and brought back some clothes. In the end, they’d decided it was best not to mention to anyone that Miho was a victim of the killer. If the doctor examined her, he’d figure out very quickly that she was in some strange state between living and dead, and the villagers would probably take her for an evil spirit and try to cast her out, potentially by violent methods.

Instead, their cover story was going to be that Miho was a traveller who had been robbed, and she had happened upon the ANBU on the road and asked for help. Before joining ANBU, Kawaguchi had worked with Espionage, and still religiously carried an undercover field kit on every mission, which included civilian clothes for both male and female henges, and it was one of these outfits he was going to fetch for Miho. Espionage agents never used the usual illusion henges, which were more easily detectable and unsuitable for long-term missions, and the alternative was a high-functioning henge, which physically changed the body but couldn’t be used for clothing.

“Are you cold?” Tenzou asked when Kawaguchi had left them hiding among some trees behind the village graveyard.

“No, I’m fine.” Miho looked down at the seals visible on her arms and thighs. “This is what the killer’s been trying to do all along. Bring the dead back to life – or partly back.”

“Something must have gone wrong with the other bodies,” Tenzou agreed. “But why did he think it would work if he used an ANBU? What was different about you?”

“We can ask him when we find him.” Miho stared down towards the village, looking troubled. “There are a lot of things I want to ask. Why do this at all? What’s the point?”

Tenzou didn’t answer. He’d been wondering the same thing himself, and he was fairly sure that when they figured out the answer, they wouldn’t like it. But the real question, the important question, he didn’t dare voice out loud. He tried not to think of it.

Could Miho be fixed?

  


* * *

  


Iruka woke with a start and panicked. He’d fallen asleep on the living room floor for long enough that his neck ached. How long had it been? Was it too late? How could he be so _stupid_?

A glance at the clock didn’t ease his pounding heart. It was almost midnight – he’d only slept for half an hour, but that was a whole thirty minutes he couldn’t afford to waste. They were going to burn Kakashi’s body in less than twelve hours. A wave of nausea rolled over him at the thought and Iruka clapped a hand to his mouth and tried to breathe slowly and deeply, fighting the urge to vomit.

Despite having worked at the seals for practically twenty-four hours straight, Iruka still barely understood what he was dealing with. He had the gist of it now, he was sure that the book was a treatise on resurrection, but there were so many details, so many base symbols that were still a complete mystery, so much that could potentially go wrong. He was working with too many unknown quantities, and the exhaustion and stress were slowing him down even more.

Iruka squeezed his head between his hands, eyes closed, for several long minutes. There was no time left. He had to face reality: he’d either manage with what he’d worked out so far or he’d fail and Kakashi would burn, forever lost. He dug his fingernails into his scalp. He couldn’t let that happen.

Ten minutes later, he’d carefully ordered his sheets of paper and tucked them into the front of the book, which in turn had been packed in his messenger bag along with a few choice paper seals. He looked in on Naruto, curled up and sleeping deeply, and then double and triple checked he had everything he needed before glancing once more at the clock and slipping out of the house.

The hospital was quiet at this time of night, and Iruka tried to walk purposefully as he made his way to the stairwell. He avoided the lift; the chance was too high that someone else would be inside and question why he was heading down to the morgue. As it was, no one approached him and the stairwell was empty.

Iruka reached the bottom of the stairs and cautiously opened the door. The corridor was deserted, and Iruka concentrated, searching out nearby chakra signatures. He could faintly sense the ANBU guarding the morgue, but no other living souls. That was good. There was no one nearby to interrupt. Iruka flicked through the seals he’d brought along and then selected one, hiding it as best he could in his palm. Every part of what he was about to do was illegal, but Iruka had long passed the point where the consequences held any weight. He didn’t even consider them as he tightened his grip on the seal and started walking towards the morgue.

The ANBU at the door was different to the one who’d been posted there earlier, a woman this time, and she stood up straighter when Iruka turned the corner. Iruka felt another bout of nausea and struggled not to show it. If he went up against an ANBU head-to-head, everything would be over, but most of the workers in the Tower, including ANBU, knew Iruka and trusted him. It pained him to use that trust as a trap.

“Iruka-sensei, it’s late,” the ANBU said. “You can’t be here now.”

“I need to see him one more time,” Iruka said. “Please, I –” He let his voice crack and the desperation show on his face. It wasn’t difficult. There was no need to act.

The ANBU sighed and shook her head, not without sympathy. “I can’t allow it. I’m sorry.”

She stepped forwards, to within an arm’s reach, and Iruka struck. The ANBU flinched back, an arm raised defensively, and Iruka’s seal hit her on the wrist. Her whole body stiffened and then went limp, and Iruka caught her as she fell to the ground. He turned her face up and saw the panic in her eyes through the holes in her mask as she realised she’d been paralysed.

“I’m sorry,” Iruka said wretchedly. “It’s not permanent. You’ll be fine when you wake up.”

The ANBU flared her chakra in a distress signal, but Iruka caught her in a headlock, pressing hard on her carotid, and in a few seconds her chakra flare abruptly cut out. Iruka checked her pulse; she was fine, simply unconscious. He removed the paralysis seal and left the ANBU lying on the ground.

Once inside the morgue, Iruka set up a ward across the door. He’d already prepared the warding seals at home and only had to activate them for the room to become an impenetrable fortress. Even if the ANBU woke up or was found before he was done, it would take at least an hour for a skilled lock picker to break through the wards. Iruka let out a shaky breath. He’d made it inside. Now no one could stop him.

The chill hit him as soon as he opened the door to Kakashi’s cold chamber. The compartment rattled as he pulled out the table, the shape of Kakashi’s body discernible under the sheet. Iruka picked up a corner of the material hesitantly, and then gripped it hard and pulled, the fabric pooling on the ground.

Beneath the sheet, Kakashi was naked. Iruka touched his face, and his neck, his chest. It didn’t feel like Kakashi. There was no warmth or life: only a dreadful stillness. Iruka kissed him on the forehead, hard, as though his lips could warm Kakashi through and wake him.

“I’m here,” he whispered. “It’ll all be over soon.”

It would be difficult to work on the table as it was, sticking out of the cold chamber. Iruka cast about and spotted a gurney with a metal frame and no top: instead, there were slats that the cold chamber tables clipped into. Iruka wheeled it over and took a moment to figure out how it worked. Then he used a lever to raise it carefully to the right height and fiddled with the table, unclipping it from the cold chamber and fastening it securely to the gurney. He shut the door and wheeled Kakashi into the centre of the room.

There was nowhere to spread out his notes, so Iruka propped the book between Kakashi’s feet, the pile of notes on top of it. He’d have to work on them one at a time, but he’d noted all of the connecting pathways, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to make sure the seals aligned. Iruka took a calligraphy brush from his bag and rested it on Kakashi’s chest, and then withdrew a small knife. Sandaime had said the seals on the other victims had been some kind of blood tattoo. Iruka didn’t have the means to accomplish that, but he had blood. He had plenty of blood.

Iruka made the cut across his left palm, cupping his hand so that when the blood welled up, it wouldn’t spill. He dipped the calligraphy brush in the blood and took a steadying breath. And then he looked at the body and his insides froze as he realised the huge factor he’d overlooked. He couldn’t see Kakashi’s chakra pathways.

“Fuck!” Iruka leaned one hand on the table and squeezed his eyes shut. How could he have forgotten something so important? The seals wouldn’t work unless he placed them correctly over Kakashi’s pathways. If he couldn’t see them, this whole attempt was useless. Iruka wanted to hit something. He wanted to scream until all of the rage and frustration and hope had drained out of him, so that he could rest. Some of the blood spilled between his fingers and started to trickle over the back of his hand.

Think. There had to be a way. Even a Hyuuga couldn’t see dead chakra pathways, there was no special bloodline limit that could do such a thing. If there was a method, it must be something anyone could do. Iruka thought about seals. The chakra pathways on chakra paper were also invisible at first; before writing a seal, the paper had to be infused with a tiny amount of chakra, enough that the lines became visible as faint blue markings. Iruka’s head snapped up.

He placed his fingers lightly on Kakashi’s abdomen and pushed chakra slowly into his body. It took much more than a small sheet of chakra paper, and Iruka trickled his chakra into Kakashi for so long that he almost gave up hope, but then he noticed the pale lines, blue against the white skin like a system of veins, and almost wept.

Once he could see the pathways, it was easy. He painted the seals carefully, holding his bleeding hand away from the gurney so that the blood now dripping from his hand wouldn’t destroy his work. After a while, the bleeding slowed too much, so Iruka drew another cut across his wrist, trying to angle his arm down to collect the blood in his hand and ending up with a frustrating mess. He made three more cuts before he finished the seals on the front of Kakashi’s body, unfeeling of the pain and annoyed rather than alarmed at the wasted blood coating his arm and spilling uselessly onto the floor.

It was while he was waiting for the blood to dry so that he could turn Kakashi’s body over and complete the seals on his back that the pounding started on the door.

“Iruka-sensei, come out of there right now!”

Iruka made a hand sign and there was a startled yelp from outside as the defensive mechanism activated and the ANBU – Iruka assumed it was an ANBU, male this time – found his hand stuck to the door. It was a trick Iruka’s seals instructor had taught him when he was a teenager and one of her own inventions, something she’d called spider web chakra. Technically it was a forbidden seal, although Iruka had gained permission to use it for certain defensive traps. He’d devised a way to build it into warding seals long ago, but never used it. Now he hoped it would give him an extra layer of defence – a human shield stuck in the doorway.

The shouting from the hallway continued, but Iruka ignored it. There was no rush. His wards were some of the best and they wouldn’t break easily. Iruka started wrapping a length of bandage temporarily around his arm so that he wouldn’t bleed all over Kakashi as he turned the body onto its stomach.

There was something awful about manhandling Kakashi in such a way, and the dead weight made him difficult to move. Iruka had to proceed very slowly and carefully, but he managed. He adjusted Kakashi’s head so that his face wouldn’t be damaged, and idly carded his fingers through Kakashi’s hair. He felt calmer than he’d done since before Sandaime had told him that Kakashi was dead. The end of this whole nightmare was in sight now. He could taste it.

The bloody bandage landed in a pile on the floor, and Iruka started to fill in the blank space of Kakashi’s back. Seals curved and spiralled their way up the back of Kakashi’s neck and down over his shoulder blades. They followed the curve of his spine and branched off down the hips and over his waist, connecting seamlessly with the lines from his abdomen, his shoulders, his thighs. It was a maze of incomprehensible perfection. Iruka drew the last line and stepped back, almost faltering from a wave of dizziness, the brush falling unnoticed from his fingers.

Outside, the shouting had stopped, perhaps some time ago. Iruka could sense several presences outside the door, but they’d given up on trying to convince him to come out. He imagined they were working their way through his wards, unpicking them with specialist seals and jutsus. It didn’t matter. Once the blood had dried, everything would be complete.

He wanted to turn Kakashi onto his back again, but he hadn’t brought more bandages and he’d dripped even more on the pile of cotton still on the ground. Iruka looked at his arm properly for the first time and his bubble of concentration expanded enough for him to register with shock just how much blood was coating his skin. He picked up the bandage and clumsily tied a tourniquet, pulling the knot with his teeth. It was fine; they were in a hospital. As soon as Kakashi was awake, he’d take down the wards and both of them could be checked over by the doctors.

Iruka lightly touched the blood at the base of Kakashi’s spine. It was cold and dry. He spread his palm flat on Kakashi’s back and hesitated, one last shot of adrenaline spiking through him. Should he double check the seals? Could he be sure he hadn’t made any mistakes? If this didn’t work, he didn’t know what he would do; the very thought made him feel sick and shaky and made him grip at the edge of the gurney with slippery fingers.

There was no time. It was now or never. Iruka gathered the chakra in his hand and _pushed_.

He felt pain, all-encompassing, hot like fire, and the chakra ripping out of his body, too much, too fast – and then he felt his hand spasm and the connection was broken, and there was a moment of blank weightlessness before he hit the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miho’s first sparring session with Tenzou went something like this:
> 
> Tenzou: *kicks Miho’s ass for the nth time* Captain, please stop going easy on me.  
> Miho: But you’re so flammable!!!


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgot to mention this in the first two chapters, but Shukunegi is actually a real Japanese fishing village. I stole the name because I wouldn't know how to make up a Japanese place name, but that's where the similarity ends. The village here isn't based on the real one at all.

Kakashi couldn’t believe he’d been sent on a B-rank. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done what was technically a chuunin level mission. Sandaime had said something about clearance levels and duty to the village and _this isn’t up for discussion, Kakashi, so stop making that face and go pack_ but when it came down to it, he was basically being sent to go and read a scroll. And it probably wasn’t even the fun kind of reading.

He and Akane had been travelling for two days now, mostly in silence. Akane’s face was familiar as one of the chuunin he saw often around the village, but he couldn’t remember ever having had a conversation with her. He was fairly sure she knew what he thought of the mission, but if she found it patronising that he looked down on B-ranks, she didn’t say anything. Kakashi decided it was best not to complain about it to her. Iruka might laugh when he made such comments, but some shinobi were touchier about the whole rank business and Kakashi didn’t want to come across as an arrogant prick.

They’d been travelling through dense forest for the better part of an hour and it was beginning to grow dark. Akane was the one who stopped first, and Kakashi overshot her before coming to a halt on the next tree branch.

“We should stop for the night,” Akane said. “Look.” She pointed through the trees to a clearing not far away. “That’s a good spot to make camp.”

Kakashi almost protested, on instinct, that there was still maybe half an hour of daylight left, but then remembered that they didn’t have a deadline for the mission. There was no point rushing if they didn’t have to, and the forest floor so far had looked uncomfortable – full of tree roots and low-lying bushes. There was no guarantee they’d find anywhere half as decent ahead.

“Sure, let’s call it a day.”

They dropped down into the clearing and Akane unlocked a sealing scroll, withdrawing two sleeping bags and a two-man tent. From her expression, Kakashi figured that she was just as reluctant to share as he was, but it was starting to look as though it might rain, so he didn’t suggest that they simply sleep in the open. It was always awkward having to camp with shinobi he didn’t know well – and sometimes with those he did – and the awkward factor rose exponentially when he was camping with a woman. He didn’t have any sexual or romantic interest in that area, but he wasn’t sure everyone else knew that.

“You think this is a waste of your time, don’t you?” Akane said.

Kakashi looked up from where he’d been retrieving food from his own sealing scroll. He hadn’t expected her to actually raise the subject. Double awkward.

“Maa, I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. “Though it’s not my usual mission, and I do have three genin to train who’ll no doubt slack off while I’m not there.”

Akane finished erecting the tent and threw the sleeping bags unceremoniously inside to deal with later. Then she sat cross legged next to the tent and watched him.

“When’s the last time you took a mission lower than an A rank?”

“Last week, technically.”

“ _Not_ a genin team mission.”

“Hm, who knows? I don’t really keep track.”

Kakashi piled the food between them and gestured for Akane to help herself. She shifted forwards and picked up a foil-wrapped sandwich.

“What’s the appeal?” she asked.

“Sorry?”

“Of risking your life for the highest bidder.” She scrunched the foil and tossed it back onto the pile. “And don’t give me that village loyalty bullshit. Most of the missions given out in the Tower are commissions – we’re basically a village of mercenaries. So what’s the appeal?”

Kakashi stared at her, startled by her bluntness and unsure how to answer. No one had asked him _why_ before. For as far back as he could remember, everyone had expected that he would make jounin, and so no one had questioned it when he had.

“The pay rise was nice,” he offered. Akane gave him a look. 

“Is the money worth risking your life for?”

“You don’t think very much of jounin, do you?”

“My boyfriend’s a jounin. And stop dodging the question, Hatake-san. If you don’t want to answer, then at least be a man and admit it.”

Well, fuck. Kakashi couldn’t help but be impressed. He liked to see a chuunin with a backbone – it was a large part of why he found Iruka so attractive. So to show his appreciation, he affected an expression of the utmost boredom. It tended to encourage feisty chuunin.

“Maa, I’ve never really thought about it,” he said. “It’s what I was raised to do, so I did it. And once you take on that responsibility, it’s hard to stop.”

Akane chewed her sandwich, looking genuinely interested. “Why?”

Kakashi shrugged. “Lots of reasons. Pride, honour, self-respect. Habit. Plus, I was only half joking about the pay. You get used to living at a certain level of comfort.”

“None of those seem like very good reasons to risk your life.”

“No offense, but it doesn’t matter to me what you think. Each time I agree to a dangerous mission, it’s my own choice. Nobody forces me into it. If I ever decide I don’t want to do this anymore, I can retire from active duty.”

Akane nodded thoughtfully. “I guess that’s a good point.”

The daylight was growing thin now, stolen quicker by the trees around them, and Kakashi built a small campfire, lighting it with a fire jutsu.

“Why are you interested in my career decisions anyway?”

“I’m not,” Akane said. “But I’m interested in the jounin mindset.”

“Because of your boyfriend?”

Her expression was enough of an answer, and Kakashi laughed.

“I understand,” he said, and grinned underneath the mask. “ _My_ boyfriend’s a chuunin.”

And then something sharp struck him in the back of the neck and everything went to hell.

The ensuing battle was short, and it was less than twenty minutes later, after they’d killed one bounty hunter, disabled the other and fled some way through the forest, that Kakashi realised it was getting hard to breathe. He stopped running and tried to slow his heart rate, blaming the exertion, but his lungs only became more desperate, his throat more closed off, and within minutes he was kneeling on the forest floor, mindless of the mud and the stones and the thorns, and fighting for every breath.

Akane was a ghost haunting the edges of his vision, but Kakashi couldn’t hear what she was saying. He’d always thought that he’d be ready for death when the time came, but even as his throat constricted enough to send his body into spasms, even as he registered distantly that Akane’s hands on his shoulders were there to comfort not to help, he believed that if he only willed it hard enough, his lungs would open on the next breath and drew air down into his body. He believed it even when he tried to breathe and nothing happened, because Sharingan Kakashi could not die like this – _he would not die like this_.

So when he woke up in a windowless room full of ANBU and blood, he didn’t panic. He didn’t even find it strange, in that first moment of consciousness. All he felt was a bone-deep sense of _being_ , and nothing had ever felt more right.

And then he raised his head from the metal table beneath him and the nearest ANBU swore – _oh my fucking God_ – and flinched away. Kakashi vaguely registered that he was naked, and that his whole body felt weak and _wrong_ in a way he couldn’t quite pinpoint, but then his gaze fell on the limp form clasped in an ANBU’s arms and everything else ceased to matter. He drew in a fresh, new breath.

“Iruka,” he rasped.

  


* * *

  


Tenzou opened his eyes in the darkness of the inn and wondered what had woken him. He turned over, expecting to see Kawaguchi sleeping in the other bed, but it was empty, sheets rumpled, and he remembered that Kawaguchi had taken the room they’d arranged for Miho so that she wouldn’t be alone during the night.

Tenzou sat up, alarmed, but then a movement by the window caught his attention and he relaxed as he saw Miho perched on the broad windowsill, watching him. She was wearing Kawaguchi’s shirt again – his field kit didn’t extend to nightwear, although it did apparently include women’s underwear – and the seals on her arms, throat and thighs were visible as vague dark markings, like intricate shadows.

“What are you doing up?” Tenzou asked, his voice rough from sleep.

Miho was silent for a moment. “I think we can add sleep to the list of things I don’t need anymore.”

They’d added food to the list earlier when they’d bought a meal and Miho had simply frowned and refused to eat. At some point she would probably need to drink water, for the sake of her working tear ducts and saliva glands, but she hadn’t felt thirsty yet, and considering she also hadn’t been to the bathroom since they’d found her, she didn’t appear to be losing water any other way.

“You’re not tired at all?” Tenzou asked.

Miho shook her head. She seemed subdued, curled in on herself slightly, her legs bent and feet resting on the windowsill. Tenzou slipped out of the bed and shivered. The tatami was cold against his bare feet. He crossed to the window and leaned against the wall, facing Miho. She glanced at his face and then looked away again.

“Aren’t you cold?” Tenzou asked.

Miho shrugged. “Maybe. I can’t feel it.”

She stared out of the window, and Tenzou followed her gaze. The inn looked over the village square, deserted at this time of night, and the wooden buildings on the other side huddled together, barely any space separating their walls.

“I wish I could remember how I died,” Miho said.

She sat quietly for a little longer, and Tenzou waited.

“It was probably horrible,” she said. “If I remembered, I’d probably wish I didn’t. But I can’t even imagine what it feels like – dying – so even though I know it’s true, I can’t believe it really happened. Everything feels unreal.” She started to push her hair behind her ear, but then combed her fingers further back and left them there, gripping lightly at the roots. “I don’t know how useful I can be to you like this. Without chakra, am I still a shinobi?”

“You do have chakra,” Tenzou said. “I can sense it. Although it feels – different. The signature’s changed.”

“Either way, there’s no point in it if I can’t use it. That makes me a civilian at best.”

“At best?”

Miho finally looked up at him. “Am I even human?”

“Of course you are.” Tenzou didn’t hesitate. “People don’t stop being human when they die.”

“Then what do they become?”

Tenzou didn’t have an answer. He wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how.

“This village doesn’t trust the dead,” Miho said, gesturing out through the window. “Are you sure you can trust me? Why did you want me to stay in here with you tonight – to keep the killer out or to keep me in?”

“Don’t think like that,” Tenzou said sharply. “You’re still my captain. I’d trust you with my life.”

Miho leaned her head back against the wall. “I’m not your captain. You’re the captain now, and I’m not going to fight you for that. I’m in no fit state to lead.”

“Am I?” Tenzou wondered aloud. He hadn’t meant to say it, but he’d been nervous enough at suddenly becoming responsible for Kawaguchi’s life. Now he had two shinobi relying on him, including one who had already been victimised and was still vulnerable.

Miho smiled softly. “Yesterday you asked me to talk about when we first became a team and I mentioned my stupid outburst. I wasn’t nervous about working with the two of you because I didn’t think you were good enough, you know. It was never that. I was worried about my ability to lead. I never told you this, but I actually spoke to Sandaime-sama about it. I asked him if I wouldn’t be better with different shinobi for my first team.”

Tenzou stood up straighter. “Why?”

“Because there seemed to be so much potential for things to go wrong. Your bloodline ability is the natural weakness of my strength – how could we possibly work together? What if I accidentally set fire to one of your attacks at a critical moment during battle? And then there was Kawaguchi.” She looked sheepish. “You know I’m not part of the crowd who think only full jounin should be allowed in ANBU, but the fact that he was only tokubetsu did worry me.”

“I never realised you felt like that,” Tenzou said. “How did you get over it and figure out how we could work well together?”

Miho shrugged. “Luck and faith.” She saw Tenzou’s expression and grinned. “Sorry, there’s no easy answer for leadership. You’ve just got to do the best you can and trust your teammates to follow and support you even when you make mistakes. Because you will make mistakes. There’s no way around that. What we do isn’t an easy job, and you’ll have to make some tough choices, sometimes where there’s no clear right or wrong answer. I think that’s the part you’ll struggle with most, but I know for sure that you’ll always prioritise the good of the team as a whole, and that’s the cornerstone of leadership.”

Tenzou crossed his arms to try and ward off the chill of the night air. “Honestly, I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

“I didn’t think I was either, but I reckon Team Phoenix turned out all right in the end. I have faith that Team Cat will work out just as well.”

She was speaking as though Tenzou’s leadership was permanent, and it alarmed Tenzou.

“Team Cat is temporary,” he said firmly. “Just until we get you back to normal, and then you’ll be captain again.”

The smile drifted from Miho’s face, and Tenzou finally realised what she’d been thinking about since he’d fallen asleep. She didn’t think they were going to save her.

“You’ll do fine, Tenzou,” Miho said softly. “I know you will.”

  


* * *

  


Kakashi glanced up towards the ceiling and then back down at the doctor, who was currently scribbling some more notes at a safe distance. Examining a dead person who could answer his questions seemed to make him uncomfortable. Kakashi couldn’t really blame him.

“No muscle reflex,” the doctor was muttering. “No reaction to pain or temperature stimulus.”

“It’s more than no reaction,” Kakashi interrupted. “I can’t feel them at all.”

The doctor looked up at him and nodded nervously.

There’d been another doctor earlier, a seals specialist, and Kakashi wished they’d let her give him the physical too. She’d been fascinated rather than frightened, although she couldn’t make heads or tails of what Iruka had done to him. Kakashi glanced at the ceiling again and drummed his fingers impatiently on the examining table he was sitting on. It had been three whole hours since Iruka had been rushed into surgery, and still no one had come to tell him what was going on.

“Hatake-san, I’m going to check your eyes now.”

Kakashi obediently stared straight ahead as the doctor shone a small torch into his good eye.

“The pupil is dilating, good,” the doctor muttered. Kakashi wondered if he always spoke out loud to himself while he worked or if that was the nerves of being alone in a room with the undead.

“Can you open your other eye?”

Kakashi hesitated. “I try not to use the sharingan when I’m chakra depleted.”

“I’ll be quick.”

Kakashi cracked open his left eye, and noticed immediately that something was wrong. He opened it fully – or he thought he had. He reached up to check and felt his eyelashes flutter against the fingers he couldn’t see.

“Shit.” He stood up, and the doctor took a hurried step back. Ignoring the waves of exhaustion, Kakashi cast about the room for something reflective. “Do you have a mirror? I need to see what’s wrong with it.”

“The sharingan is deactivated,” the doctor offered hesitantly.

“So’s my vision,” Kakashi snapped. “Get me a fucking mirror.”

“I don’t think there’s one in here…”

“Then I’ll go find one.”

The doctor looked alarmed. “You can’t leave this room. The hokage’s instructions were very specific. Until we know what’s happening –”

“What’s happened is that I’ve come back from the dead. It’s pretty fucking obvious. Now either find me a mirror or I’ll go and find my own.”

A knock came at the door, and then Sandaime stepped into the consulting room with Hyuuga Hiashi in tow. Kakashi had a brief moment of relief that someone had brought him a pair of hospital pyjamas shortly after he’d woken from the dead. And then he pushed aside all distracting thoughts, even his blind, useless eye. There was one vital question he had to ask first.

“How’s Iruka?”

Sandaime’s gaze had already landed on his eye, but he didn’t comment. “He’s been given a blood transfusion, but the chakra pathways in his right arm were severely damaged. He came out of surgery about half an hour ago.”

Kakashi drew his lips tight. Chakra pathways were a bitch to heal, and if Iruka’s arm was damaged he wouldn’t be able to use jutsu for a week or so.

“No one’s told me what happened to him. All I know is that he brought me back from the dead with these seals, but that shouldn’t have _hurt_ him. And all that blood…”

“The injuries on his arm were self-inflicted,” Sandaime said, and Kakashi stood up very straight. “He used his blood for the seals.”

Kakashi raised his arm and examined the seals more closely. He’d noticed that they were a dark red colour, but the earlier female doctor had discovered that the marks were under the surface of Kakashi’s skin, permanent like a tattoo. If Sandaime was right, Iruka’s blood was now, somehow, under his skin. Kakashi wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“As for the ruptured chakra pathways,” Sandaime continued grimly, “our best theory is that they were damaged due to the trauma of his chakra being ripped out through his hand by your seals. He lost almost all of it. Kakashi, I want you to understand how serious this is. Resurrecting you almost killed him.”

Kakashi remembered the horror of dying. He never wanted Iruka to experience that.

“I want to see him.”

“You’re not leaving this room until we’ve finished examining you,” Sandaime said.

Kakashi wanted to protest, but he could tell by the expression on Sandaime’s face that it wouldn’t be worth it. He glanced up at the ceiling again and tried to curb his desperate worry.

Hiashi had been hanging back near the door, observing Kakashi, but now Sandaime turned to him and he stepped forwards.

“Hiashi is going to examine your chakra pathways. Do you still feel chakra depleted?”

“Yes,” Kakashi said, trying to ignore Hiashi’s penetrating gaze as he activated the byakugan. “The usual symptoms. Physical exhaustion, mental sluggishness.” He paused, considering. “Hunger.”

“There’s definitely not enough chakra in his system,” Hiashi said. “Of what’s there, most of it’s concentrated in the seals. I’ve never seen anything like this before. The chakra in your own circulatory system is keeping the seals active.”

“What can you see in my eye?” Kakashi asked.

Hiashi stepped closer, taking Kakashi’s chin gently in his hand and moving his head left and right, concentrating on his blind right eye.

“Strange,” he murmured. “The chakra has rerouted around the eye, as though it’s avoiding it. I’d have to consult a pathway map, but I think the chakra’s taken over some of your blood vessels and converted them to chakra pathways in order to avoid the eye.”

“Is that possible?”

“It happens sometimes,” the doctor chipped in. He looked more at ease now that the hokage and a clan leader were in the room. “If a chakra pathway is damaged irreparably, the chakra will find other ways to continue circulating, especially in shinobi. Sometimes it takes over nerves, tendons, capillaries – anything that will bring it back on route. Of course, it interferes with the normal functioning of those body parts so we try to prevent it happening.”

“Is that why I’m blind in that eye?”

“Probably. Nothing’s powering the eye, so it won’t function. Although I couldn’t begin to guess why your chakra isn’t following the normal pathway.”

Kakashi looked at Hiashi, who let go of his chin and stepped back. “I can’t see the pathways if there’s no chakra inside, so I can’t tell you whether they’re damaged.”

“I was about to examine the right eye just before you came in,” the doctor said.

Sandaime gestured for him to continue, and Kakashi sat back on the table, relieved to be able to rest and trying not to show it. The doctor instructed him to cover his good eye and then presumably shone the torch into his dead sharingan. The light trickled red through the cracks between Kakashi’s fingers.

“Can you sense the light?”

“No.”

“The pupil isn’t dilating…Hatake-san, please look left without moving your head.”

Kakashi tried his best.

“Now right. OK, I’m just going to touch close to your eye.”

Kakashi felt the doctor pull down the skin beneath his eye, and then he pulled the eyelid up. When he let Kakashi uncover his good eye, Kakashi saw Hiashi and Sandaime exchanging a worried look.

“Is it working at all?”

“I’m afraid there’s no movement or reaction to stimulus,” the doctor said. “And there’s…well, it seems to be the beginnings of a tache noir.”

Kakashi stared at him blankly. “A what?”

The doctor fidgeted with his torch. “When the eyes of a – a corpse are exposed to air, they sometimes develop a blackish brown stripe. Your right eye looks perfectly healthy, but the left has started to dry out and there’s a yellow spot starting to form beside the iris.”

Kakashi took a moment to digest this. All things considered, he’d been fairly calm this morning. Iruka’s state had alarmed him more than his own, mostly due to the fact that his death was still a vivid memory and felt as though it had happened directly before he’d woken up in the morgue. He’d been too tired and too shocked to feel anything more than an all-encompassing relief that he was alive enough to know he was dead, but now, finally, a trickle of horror crept in.

“Are you telling me,” he said very slowly, “that my eye is still completely dead?”

The doctor glanced nervously at Sandaime and then nodded.

“I’m afraid,” he started, and then cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m afraid that if we don’t figure out how to redirect your chakra into the eye, it’s going to continue to degrade.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

The doctor looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else.

“It means that your eye has already started to rot.”

  


* * *

  


Before Miho had died, Team Phoenix had had one suspect for the murders. Shukunegi was a civilian village, and it hadn’t taken them long to discover that their shinobi population was a single man: a first generation Water Country immigrant called Go Jun. He was the one who’d identified the seals on the first body as having Mist origins, and it was common knowledge in Shukunegi that he came from a family of seals experts and had come to the Land of Fire after the end of the last war, having denounced the shinobi lifestyle and the politics of his homeland. There were plenty of rumours of atrocities he might have seen, but when they’d questioned Jun himself, he’d refused point blank to talk about the war.

Today, Tenzou and Kawaguchi were going to return to that line of investigation and pay Jun a visit. Miho was going to accompany them to the village shop, where Jun worked, primarily because Tenzou wanted to see if Jun would react to seeing her there with ANBU, but also because she had a pressing need to buy more clothes. She currently looked like she’d dressed from a jumble sale, wearing a pair of men’s trousers because Kawaguchi’s only skirt was too short to hide the seals and in any case had been ripped apart to create a ragged scarf to cover her neck. The blouse was tight over her broad shoulders, and the jacket was threatening to rip at the seams around her biceps.

“For fuck’s sake,” she’d grunted the day before as she’d got changed under the cover of some trees behind the graveyard. “Why is your henge so damn petite?”

“It’s not my fault you’re tall and ripped,” Kawaguchi had shot back, still sore about having to destroy his skirt. “I designed my henge to seduce men, not beat the shit out of them.”

They arrived at the shop sometime midmorning. It was larger than Tenzou remembered, but gave the impression of smallness because of how crammed the space was. The shop sold a little of everything, and there were vaguely defined sections for food, clothes, toiletries, kitchen utensils, paper and ink, and a single shelf with children’s toys. It wasn’t the village’s only shop, but it was the general purpose store, and therefore the busiest.

There was a cluster of women inside when they stepped through the doorway. Men were a rare sight in the village during the day if the weather was clear. Most of them earned their living from fishing, so they were out on the boats or on the stony beach, hauling in their catch or repairing their equipment.

“Jun’s in the back,” the owner told Tenzou when he asked. “Either stacking shelves or counting stock. Take a look around, you’ll find him.”

Miho branched off to rummage through the clothes, and Kawaguchi found a door to the back room, almost hidden by a display of wool and knitting needles. The back of the shop was a smaller room, even more crammed than the front, with boxes and crates piled high on the floor.

“Jun-san?” Tenzou called.

“Back here,” came the reply from behind a stack of cardboard.

Go Jun was a short man with the typical Water Country dark hair and eyes. His accent was stronger than Miho’s, but he was well-spoken, and Tenzou recalled that he’d lived in Shukunegi for about ten years with his wife and two daughters, who he’d also brought with him from Mist. He looked startled to see two ANBU in the stock room.

“Sorry to interrupt your work,” Tenzou said. “We wanted to ask you a few more questions.”

Jun put down the clipboard he’d been holding and stood up straighter.

“You still think I had something to do with those murders,” he said.

“We haven’t accused you of anything,” Kawaguchi pointed out. “Although if there’s something you’d like to get off your chest...”

“No,” Jun said. “I understand why you’re interested in me, but this is not the work of any villager.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Kawaguchi asked.

Jun shifted uncomfortably but didn’t break eye contact.

“Because the people in Shukunegi want to live peaceful lives. We’re not interested in power or the shinobi arts. There’s no reason for anyone here to want to murder our friends and neighbours.”

“But you used to be a shinobi,” Tenzou said. “A chuunin ranked seals expert, if I remember correctly.”

“I gave that up when I left Mist.”

“It must have been difficult to lose that prestige and ability. Why did you decide to live as a civilian?”

“And why here?” Kawaguchi added. “In this tiny, unknown village in another country? Someone might think you were hiding from something.”

Tenzou would have missed the twitch of Jun’s fingers if he wasn’t looking for it. Jun was hiding his tells. Even as a chuunin, he must have had some kind of anti-interrogation training, and the very fact that he was employing it now was interesting.

“After my experience in the war, I didn’t want anything more to do with my homeland. My wife and daughters were civilians, so when we came to this country I decided I would quit my career as a shinobi and live peacefully at home with them.” He paused.

“Why here?” Tenzou prompted.

“You’re right that I’m hiding, but not for the reasons you suspect,” Jun said reluctantly. He looked at Tenzou rather than Kawaguchi, sensing more sympathy from that quarter. “I didn’t commit war crimes against your people. It’s not your government I fear.”

“You betrayed Mist?”

“I was involved in planning the defences around the village, as measures against invasion.”

Tenzou understood. Mist would never have let a shinobi with such valuable knowledge leave the country. If Konoha – or any other hidden village – got their hands on the information he was carrying, they might use it to launch an attack on Mist.

“So you’re not great at loyalty,” Kawaguchi said. “It’s a shame. You sounded so convincing before when you were talking about the trust between villagers in Shukunegi.”

Jun snapped his head around to stare at him, appalled but not angry. Perhaps – afraid? Tenzou watched him struggle to clamp down on his emotions and fail.

“I didn’t hurt anyone! I have no interest in those seals. They’ve done so much damage to this community already. Nothing can justify using such things.”

The door to the main shop opened, and all three of them looked back towards it as someone entered the back room.

“ANBU-san?” Miho called. “Are you in here?”

She turned the corner and stepped into full view of Jun. Tenzou watched him closely. He looked thrown by the sudden interruption, but other than a mild confusion, he didn’t react at all to seeing her face.

“Sorry, miss, but this area is off-limits to customers,” he said, forcing a smile.

“She’s with us,” Kawaguchi said. “We found her yesterday, up on the south road along the clifftop, robbed by bandits.”

There were still no signs of recognition on Jun’s face. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you.” Miho inclined her head politely and turned to Kawaguchi. “I’m sorry to interrupt your conversation. Should I wait outside?”

“No, I think we’re done,” Kawaguchi said. He glanced at Tenzou, who nodded, and then looked at Jun. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing you again very soon.”

“How’d it go?” Miho asked when they were back on the street.

“He knows something,” Kawaguchi said lowly. “Nothing can justify using such things, he said.”

“Sounds like he knows what the seals do,” Tenzou agreed. “Even though he’s always claimed he can’t read them.”

“But he didn’t recognise me,” Miho said. “Unless you think he’s that good at acting.”

“No way,” Kawaguchi said. “He was twitchy. Something has him spooked.”

Tenzou turned back and checked the opening times on the front of the shop. Jun would be working until five o’clock.

“Let’s keep an eye on him,” he said.

  


* * *

  


Iruka had been drifting in and out of heavy sleep for what felt like forever. This time when he awoke, he managed to flutter his eyes open without too much effort and saw Sandaime sitting on a chair beside his bed. Iruka frowned and tried to understand what the hokage was doing in his bedroom.

“Iruka, are you with me?” Sandaime asked. “You’re in the hospital.”

“Why?” Iruka murmured. He tried to shift on the bed but couldn’t move his arms. Blearily, he looked down and saw his left arm, bandaged from the elbow to the wrist and attached with a soft but sturdy fabric cuff to the raised edge of the hospital bed. His right arm was also cuffed and bandaged, and the sight of it jolted Iruka back to full awareness.

“Kakashi,” he gasped. He looked up at Sandaime, tugging once more at his wrists in frustration. He couldn’t read the grim expression on Sandaime’s face. “Is Kakashi – is he...?”

“He isn’t dead,” Sandaime said. “But he isn’t entirely alive.”

Iruka relaxed back against the mattress, the relief so strong he could have cried.

“He isn’t dead,” he repeated. “The seals worked.”

“Did you hear what I said?” Sandaime asked sharply. “You haven’t brought him back to life, Iruka. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

There was pain in his arms, Iruka registered vaguely. And drugs in his bloodstream, judging by how hazy his head felt.

“You said he isn’t dead. That’s the only important thing.”

“Will Kakashi see it that way?”

That got Iruka’s attention, addled though it was.

“I can fix it,” he insisted. “Anything that’s wrong. I just need to study more and figure out what the seals really do, then I can adjust them.”

Sandaime put a hand over his face. “You didn’t know what they did and you used them anyway. You risked everything for something you didn’t even understand.”

There was an edge to his voice that Iruka had never heard before.

“What do you mean? I didn’t risk anything.”

“You nearly died,” Sandaime shouted.

Iruka stared at him, wide-eyed. Sandaime stood up and took hold of one of Iruka’s cuffed wrists, giving it a sharp shake.

“On top of the danger you put yourself in, you are _under arrest_ for the crimes you committed along the way. Assault of an ANBU, trespassing, use of a forbidden seal, and tampering with a shinobi’s remains. This is serious, Iruka. What were you thinking? Were you thinking at all?”

“You’re angry with me?” Iruka asked, stunned. “Kakashi was _dead_. I had to save him.”

“Dead people don’t need saving.” Sandaime’s voice was still raised. “Would you trade your life for his? What if the seal hadn’t worked? You would have broken serious laws and almost died for nothing. You could _go to jail_ , Iruka!”

“What would you have done?” Iruka shot back. “If someone you loved was dead and you knew how to save them. You’re saying you wouldn’t even try?”

“There’s a natural order to things. Everyone dies, it’s the way of the world. Those left behind have a duty to mourn the dead with dignity, and honour their memories with strength and courage.”

“I don’t need _dignity_. Dignity is worthless compared to Kakashi’s life. How could I live with myself if I’d known how to save him and done nothing? That isn’t courageous or honourable.”

Sandaime took a deep breath and let it out. When he next spoke, his voice was quieter but no less angry.

“Are you sure that what you’ve done is saving him? You might not realise it yet, and neither does Kakashi, but what you’ve done to him _will_ have consequences. If it destroys you both, will it still be worth it?”

“I don’t understand why you’re angry,” Iruka said, wrenching at his wrists again and then wincing at the pain in his arms. “All right, I committed some crimes, and I do feel bad about the ANBU I attacked, but I didn’t hurt her. Everything I did was with the best of intentions. Surely that justifies my actions.”

The argument was tiring him out. There was a bone-deep weariness suffusing his whole body that Iruka now recognised as severe chakra depletion.

“I understand what was driving you,” Sandaime said. He also sounded tired now, his temper, usually so mild and restrained, subsiding. “I was also deeply upset to hear of Kakashi’s death. But raising the dead can’t come without a price, and I’m afraid of what you’ll have to pay. Both of you.”

“I’d give up anything,” Iruka said simply.

“Can you ask Kakashi to do the same?”

Iruka was quiet.

Sandaime let out a heavy sigh. “Kakashi is being looked after elsewhere in the hospital, but for the time being I’m afraid you’re not allowed visitors. Considering your condition, I haven’t felt the need to place a guard on your door, but there are wards in place that won’t allow access to anyone except the medical staff, myself, ANBU and you. Although, of course, you won’t be allowed to come and go as you please.” He gestured to the restraints on Iruka’s wrists.

Iruka couldn’t care less about being strapped to the bed. “I need to see Kakashi.”

“Not until we’ve decided how to proceed with your case.”

Iruka tried to sit up and fell back heavily onto the bed. “Please, I have to see him. You said something was still wrong with him. I need to look at the seals and start studying again, otherwise I can’t fix him.”

“Absolutely not,” Sandaime said coldly. “The book has been confiscated. You’d do well to concentrate on getting better while we decide what’s going to happen to you.”

He turned and crossed to the door. Iruka watched him, furious.

“Hokage-sama.”

Sandaime paused but didn’t turn.

“I’d do it again,” Iruka said. “For Kakashi, I’d do anything."

  


* * *

  


Kakashi stared into the mirror and gritted his teeth. It was a small compact mirror he’d managed to beg from the female doctor, who’d been dragged back once again, this time with a chakra pathway specialist in tow, and asked if they could do something about his sharingan. The answer had amounted to an ‘I don’t know’, and Kakashi was starting to seriously worry.

Since then, he’d been moved from the consulting room up to a private room on the ANBU ward. The medical staff who worked here had S class clearance and were as yet the only people apart from Sandaime, Hiashi and a handful of ANBU to know that he wasn’t dead. Kakashi wondered if Iruka knew. He hoped so. He’d asked another half a dozen times if he could visit Iruka, but the answer was still a resounding no.

“What do you keep looking at?”

A nurse was watching him curiously from where she was tidying away the food he’d been brought and hadn’t touched.

“My eye,” Kakashi said. “It’s sort of dead.”

“Not that. You keep glancing up at the wall.” The nurse gestured, and Kakashi stared at the blank wall, frowning.

“Do I?”

The nurse gave him a strange look, but at least she didn’t seem to think he was going to eat her, or whatever the consulting doctor had been scared of.

“You haven’t touched your food,” she said. “I thought you were hungry.”

“I am,” Kakashi said, but doubtfully. He’d stared at the small meal for a while before rejecting it, and was still unsure why.

The nurse scolded him one more time before leaving the room, but Kakashi ignored her in favour of further examining his eye. He wished someone would let him see Iruka. Not only was he fretting over Iruka’s health, but he was sure that Iruka could think of some way to solve the problem of his sharingan.

Kakashi had always known that Iruka was a true master of his chosen specialism, but he’d never truly felt awe at Iruka’s accomplishments until now. Alongside that deep respect for Iruka’s skills, he felt a wave of affection and longing whenever he considered that Iruka had broken down the walls of the possible for him. It wasn’t Kakashi’s place to rot in a grave this early, he knew that deep in his soul, and Iruka had reached into the dark silence of death and pulled him back into the light. His body might not be perfect yet, but Kakashi had faith that Iruka could fix what was wrong with him, could deliver him warmth and life and the power of his sharingan. After a godlike feat of reanimation, how hard could it be to make a few small improvements?

This time Kakashi caught himself glancing up at the wall, and frowned. He concentrated, seeking out whatever had subconsciously commanded his attention. In that direction there was – something. A feeling on the edge of his awareness, faint and undecipherable, but undeniably present. The almost-hunger prickled, as though he’d smelt the faintest waft of a delicious meal.

Kakashi put the mirror down. Sandaime had told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to leave his hospital room, but this was important. Now that he was listening, he could hear the urgent messages his body was sending him. There was something out there that he needed, and it was close.

The only question now was how to sneak out of the ward without being stopped. Kakashi brought his hands together to perform a henge, but hesitated. He hadn’t tried to mould chakra since he’d woken up in the morgue, and the last thing he wanted was to deplete his chakra supplies even more and end up passed out in a corridor somewhere. It was probably best not to risk it. Besides, he was a shinobi. How hard could it be to sneak through a building without chakra?

The answer turned out to be: surprisingly easy. Kakashi was well acquainted with the ANBU ward, even though it had been a few years since he’d last met the requirements to be admitted. The entrance to the ward led onto the nurse’s station, then there were the main patient rooms, each with six to ten beds, and behind those the private rooms. At the very back, furthest from the hospital corridors, were the storage cupboards where, among other things, the patients’ personal belongings were kept. In this ward, that mostly meant weapons and ANBU uniforms.

No one was in the corridor when Kakashi poked his head out, so he slipped out of his room and around the corner to the storage cupboards. They were neatly labelled, which Kakashi thought was awful security until he considered that even a ward full of wounded ANBU was pretty good protection. Then he considered how he was going to break in. Surely the door was locked. It never hurt to check, though, so he reached out and gave the door an experimental yank.

The lock snapped with a loud crack and the door opened so sharply that it almost hit Kakashi in the face.

“What the fuck?”

He stepped quickly inside the cupboard and closed the door after him as best he could with the broken lock, standing in the small dark room and listening closely at the door. What had just happened? He was sure he hadn’t pulled the door particularly hard, and he was chakra depleted to boot. Did they make their locks out of paper around here? There was no ache in his muscles, which was the usual sign that he’d overexerted himself. Kakashi flexed his fingers and filed away the information to question later. He didn’t have time to experiment now.

After half a minute when no one had come to investigate the noise, he switched on the small overhead light. There wasn’t much space to root around, and he had to be careful with the armour lest it clang together and give him away, but he managed to find a uniform that almost fit him and wasn’t too damaged or bloodstained. Of the masks, he chose one he recognised so that if he saw its owner, he’d know to duck away. The patient rooms themselves branched off the twisting corridor that led out of the ward, so he wouldn’t have to walk past the hospital beds, but he couldn’t assume he wouldn’t be seen.

Kakashi switched off the light and cautiously opened the cupboard door. When nobody immediately yelled at him, Kakashi sidled out and nonchalantly closed the door behind him. The best way to leave the ward would be to walk confidently out, as though he had every right to be there. He was conscious that the seals on his arms were visible in the gap between shirt and arm guards, but there was nothing he could do about that. If he walked quickly, maybe no one would notice.

As it happened, no one gave him a second look, and Kakashi turned onto the main hospital corridor with a sense of anti-climax. When he was booted off the ANBU ward and had no more need to sneak in and out of it, he’d have serious words with the staff about their security.

No one looked twice at him in the main building either, and Kakashi slipped silently through the corridors, becoming less focused on his surroundings and more on the feeling he was tracking. It didn’t grow much stronger as he moved through the hospital, but Kakashi knew he was getting closer because the hunger inside him grew sharper.

He turned onto a ward and nobody stopped him. ANBU could go anywhere. The ward name passed him by – it was unimportant. Kakashi ventured deeper into the ward and stopped outside the door to a private room. It was in here. He reached out and closed his hand around the door, the wards buzzing faintly and accepting his chakra signature, and then Kakashi stepped inside and closed the door behind him with a quiet click.

A person was sleeping in the bed, arms bandaged and hands cuffed to the raised plastic sides. At first Kakashi thought it was a woman because of the long dark hair fanned over the pillow, but then he moved soundlessly to the side of the bed and saw that it was Iruka. The need in his body trembled at the sight.

If he’d had a heartbeat, it would have been pounding. If he’d needed to take breaths, they would have been coming short and sharp. He reached out and placed a hand lightly on the cuff that trapped Iruka’s wrist against the side of the bed. Iruka didn’t stir.

He really was so very hungry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A month after Kakashi’s death, Akane’s boyfriend was sent on an S class mission in enemy territory. His team was discovered, and during the ensuing fight he received a knife wound across the forehead. If the knife had struck an inch lower, he would have been blinded.


	4. Chapter Four

Kakashi took off the ANBU mask and watched Iruka sleep. He tried to rein in the hunger, but every instinct screamed at him to reach out and touch and take. He didn’t know exactly what he needed, but it was something only Iruka had. This close, he recognised that feeling on the edge of his consciousness as something like a chakra signature, but he shouldn’t have been able to feel Iruka from halfway across the building, and certainly not like a lone flickering candle when there were so many other people between the two of them. He couldn’t feel anyone else in that way – only Iruka. No one else existed as clearly. No one else mattered.

His hand had been resting on the restraint at Iruka’s wrist and almost without thinking he moved it to hover over Iruka’s hand, but caught himself at the last moment and didn’t close the distance. Iruka’s chakra signature felt weak and he looked unbearably vulnerable, sleeping, injured and tied down. Behind the hunger, Kakashi was burning with worry. He didn’t want to hurt Iruka more, but it was difficult to concentrate on anything other than fulfilling the need in his body.

He stood very still for a long moment, and then Iruka sighed softly in his sleep and flexed his hand. Their fingers brushed together.

The jolt felt like a spark of electricity, and Iruka jerked his hand away, pulling the cuff taut, and woke with a breathless cry. The hunger roared, and Kakashi’s hand shot forward, seeking out what had passed between them, thoughts short-circuiting as his body reacted on its own.

“Don’t!”

The pain in Iruka’s voice cut through everything, and Kakashi moved back two rapid steps as though he’d been burned.

There was a moment of silence as they stared at each other, wide-eyed, and then Iruka tried to sit up before remembering that he was cuffed and immobile. He glanced at the restraints with irritation and then looked back up at Kakashi.

“You really are alive.”

He said it softly and with so much love that Kakashi almost stepped back to the bedside and kissed him, but the hunger hadn’t disappeared and he was afraid of what it might make him do.

“More or less,” he said, equally soft. “Iruka, I’m sorry but I have to leave.”

“No!” Iruka raised himself as much as he could, gripping the sides of the bed to support himself. His arms trembled at the strain, and Kakashi remembered what Sandaime had said about his chakra depletion. Beneath his skin, the hunger buzzed.

“If I stay here I’ll hurt you,” Kakashi said desperately. “I don’t want to go, but I need your chakra and you can’t afford to lose any more. You felt what happened just now when I touched you.”

“Then don’t touch me,” Iruka said. “But don’t go. Come here. Please.”

Kakashi cautiously stepped back to the bedside. Now that Iruka was awake and speaking, he felt that he had a greater control over his body’s instincts. He kept his hands resolutely by his sides.

Iruka tried to say something else, but his voice broke. He looked as though he might cry, and Kakashi wished he could rip away the cuffs and hold Iruka close.

“I’m sorry,” Iruka managed. “I just – you were dead and I. I couldn’t _stand_ it, Kakashi. I love you so much.”

“It’s OK now. I’m back. I’m fine. I won’t leave you again.”

“But Sandaime-sama said there was still something wrong. I know I made a mistake in the seals – they weren’t supposed to suck my chakra out like that. But if all you need is more chakra, I can give it to you in a few days when I have enough to spare.”

So no one had told Iruka that Kakashi was a walking corpse. Kakashi was about to open his mouth and spill his symptoms, but a thread of unease made him keep quiet. He remembered the way the consulting doctor had kept his distance, and the uneasy look the nurse had given him. If Iruka knew, would he look at him that way?

“There are a few issues,” he said vaguely. “I’m sure you can sort them out when you’re feeling better.”

Iruka nodded, relief clear on his face, and gently lay back down, no longer able to hold himself up off the mattress. Kakashi frowned at the restraints.

“Why are you tied to the bed?”

Iruka hesitated. “I might have got in some trouble while bringing you back.”

“Wait, you mean – you’ve been arrested?” Sandaime hadn’t mentioned _that_. Kakashi clenched his teeth, furious.

“It was worth it,” Iruka said earnestly. “And they’ll probably let me off once they realise I had no choice. It’s not like I was trying to do anything bad.”

Kakashi put a hand on the cuff again, careful not to touch Iruka. It was made of some thick material and fastened with a small metal padlock, soft so as not to hurt an injured prisoner but also strong enough that no amount of struggling would make it come loose. Kakashi took hold of the fabric and pulled experimentally.

There was a loud tearing noise and then the cuff fell to the floor, the padlock clinking against the linoleum. Iruka stared at him and then down at his free wrist.

“How did you do that?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Kakashi said. “Don’t move, I’m going to do the other one.”

“I don’t think you should be freeing me…”

It was too late; Kakashi reached out and ripped the other cuff free, amazed at how little effort it took. Iruka sat up and massaged his wrists.

“You’ll get in trouble,” he said. “Although…” He glanced at Kakashi’s stolen ANBU uniform. “Somehow I don’t think that’s yours, so you’re probably already in trouble.”

“I might have borrowed it.”

Kakashi realised his ANBU tattoo was on full display and had a moment of panic before remembering that Iruka had already seen it when he'd applied the seals, which snaked around and over it. He wondered if Iruka had been surprised to see the ANBU symbol, although he'd long suspected that Iruka knew it was there. They hadn't been together for long enough that he could legally tell Iruka about his ex-ANBU status, and he always wore a henge over his left bicep when they were together - he never knew when his shirt might end up discarded on the floor - but as well as being smart enough to figure it out, Iruka was very good at sensing chakra. He'd probably felt the henge long ago and figured out what it meant. Secretly, Kakashi had always hoped this was the case. He wanted Iruka to know every part of him.

Iruka picked up the second cuff, which had fallen on the bed, and tried to rip it like Kakashi had done. The strongly woven material didn’t budge. He looked at Kakashi, dumbfounded, but before he could ask the question, the door behind Kakashi opened.

An ANBU stepped into the room and took in Kakashi’s ANBU disguise, the broken cuffs, and the guilty expressions on both of their faces.

“Where do I even begin?” she sighed.

  


* * *

  


As five o’clock and the end of Jun’s working day approached, Tenzou and Kawaguchi deposited Miho at the small pub at the inn and went on alone to the shop. It was difficult to move freely in Shukunegi without being seen, simply because strangers stood out and gossip travelled quickly, so instead of bothering to use henges, they walked most of the way and then took up residence across from the shop in the shadows between two houses. The positive of a small village was that there weren’t many residents to fill the streets, so as long as nobody was watching them from the windows, they could move through shorter areas inconspicuously.

Tenzou had been worried about leaving Miho alone, but there were always a few villagers sitting in the inn, drinking and talking, and it was unlikely that the killer would try to hurt or capture her – assuming he had any such intentions – while she had company. Miho had also pointed out that the locals might tell her things they wouldn’t mention to ANBU, so she was as much on an information gathering mission as staying in a safe place.

“I wonder what the hokage will do when he finds out Miho isn’t as dead as we thought,” Kawaguchi mused as they waited for Jun to close up the shop. “If the message takes three days to get to Konoha, it should arrive tomorrow. If he calls us back then we only have a few more days. I really hate this back and forth crap.”

Tenzou stared guiltily at the shop window. “We might have a little longer than you think.”

“Why? Will it take longer?”

Tenzou studiously avoided looking at Kawaguchi, and he heard a soft exhale as Kawaguchi got it.

“You haven’t sent a message.”

His tone wasn’t accusatory, but Tenzou winced anyway.

“We need the extra time. Besides, we can’t assume the killer will stick around now that he’s achieved a resurrection. If we leave again, he might take the chance to run.”

“If he hasn’t already. He needs the book to do it again. The whole town must know we took it back to Konoha – he could be there already, searching for it.”

“Wouldn’t we have heard about it if someone had left for Konoha?”

“Not necessarily. Tomorrow we should ask around and find out if anyone left the village after we did. But that’s another reason why you need to send word to the hokage. If someone’s after that book, that seals expert you gave it to could be in danger.”

“Shit,” Tenzou muttered. “OK, fine, I’ll send it later.”

“Besides,” Kawaguchi added, “we can’t keep something like this from Miho’s father. It’s not right to let him think his daughter’s still dead.”

Tenzou didn’t voice the thought that Miho’s father might prefer a tragic but normal death to Miho’s in-between state. It was awful to consider, but after his conversation with Miho last night, he wondered if Miho wouldn’t prefer to be dead than to be not quite alive. He hadn’t dared to ask.

The bell above the shop door tinkled faintly, and Jun stepped out onto the street, locking up behind him. He started walking and Tenzou beckoned Kawaguchi to follow him up the wall of the nearest house, using chakra to stick to the wood and climbing up onto the roof. They followed Jun along the street by rooftop, keeping low and moving lightly. Because the roofs were so steeply sloped and the buildings so close together, it was easy to angle themselves so as not to be seen from the street.

They reached Jun’s house without incident, and he went inside. His home was on the same side of the street as their current rooftop, and Tenzou looked around for somewhere better to sit and conduct surveillance.

Jun’s house was at the village border on the north side of Shukunegi. Here, the cliff came almost onto the street itself, the dirt road petering out into an embarrassed stretch of rocks and sand for a few short metres before meeting the steep slope. Kawaguchi touched Tenzou’s arm and pointed towards it.

“There’s a nook up on the cliff wall that might give us a good view. The rock jutting out there should stop us being seen from the ground.”

Tenzou followed Kawaguchi’s pointing finger. There was indeed a small alcove just above the height of the roofs and facing Jun’s house.

“How do you suggest we get up there without being seen?”

“Body flicker,” Kawaguchi said in a tone that suggested it was the obvious answer.

Tenzou looked doubtfully at the small ledge they’d have to share. Body flicker jutsus were great for speed, but not so amazing for accuracy.

“We’d knock each other off the cliff.”

Tenzou couldn’t see Kawaguchi rolling his eyes in the shadows of the mask, but he had well-practiced senses for Kawaguchi’s exasperation.

“It’s all about chakra control. You go first and I’ll follow. Stay on the right hand side of the ledge. My right, not yours.”

He climbed down the side of the building and Tenzou followed. If they started from the roof it would make a noise on the wood and bring the occupants of the house to the window.

Once on the ground, Tenzou cast one last glance at Kawaguchi, who shooed him towards the cliff, and then brought his hands together to form the jutsu. When he moved, his muscles seemed to hum with power, and he made it across the street and up the cliff face in seconds. The alcove was smaller than it had looked from the ground, and Tenzou smacked his arm rather painfully on the rock before managing to halt his momentum.

From this vantage point, he was facing Jun’s side of the street at an angle. He couldn’t quite see into the windows, but he had a clear view of the front door and could see that there was no back yard, only a sloping line of weed-infested dirt between the back of the house and the next street down. He sat as close to the left-hand side of the alcove as he could and hoped there’d be enough room for the both of them.

There was a brief rush of air and then Kawaguchi was standing next to him, smug and with both elbows miraculously unharmed. Life, Tenzou decided, wasn’t fair.

“Cosy in here, isn’t it?” Kawaguchi said, sitting next to him. “Good view though. How long are we settling in for?”

“Depends whether Jun-san leaves the house.”

The extra bulk added by their armour meant that there wasn’t enough space for them to sit comfortably without touching, but Tenzou tried his best to shuffle further into the wall of solid stone. Kawaguchi noticed and laughed. 

“You really need to get over that weird fear of people invading your personal space. You’ll find it difficult to get a boyfriend with that attitude.”

Tenzou stared at him. “A _boy_ friend?”

Kawaguchi shrugged, a difficult manoeuvre in their limited space. “Well, I’ve got to support my side of the bet.”

“The bet?” Tenzou asked slowly. “You mean you and Miho are still betting on my sexuality?”

“What else are we supposed to do when you never mention any partners and refuse to talk about your sex life?”

But that wasn’t the issue Tenzou was having, and didn’t that say something about the company he kept?

“But didn’t you make that bet _three years ago_? You were espionage, you’re supposed to be good at information gathering!”

As he’d sensed the eye roll, Tenzou now sensed a pout.

“It’s not like I haven’t tried! I even used a henge to try and pick you up at a bar once, but you turned me down.” Tenzou whipped his head around to face him, wide-eyed. Kawaguchi was still watching the house, entirely blasé about the fact that he’d tried to honey trap his teammate. “Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean I picked the wrong gender. I have no idea what your type is.”

“When the hell did this happen?!”

“Oh, ages ago. You wouldn’t remember.”

Tenzou instantly began a mental sort through of the various people who’d tried to chat him up in bars over the last few months, even though he knew there was no point to it. When Kawaguchi didn’t want to be recognised, even his own parents would never figure him out.

“By the way,” Kawaguchi said, and Tenzou hoped he didn’t have any more shocking confessions to make. He didn’t think his blood pressure could take it. “I’ve been thinking. Since Jun didn’t recognise Miho, he can’t be the killer, but he might be the accomplice who left us the book.”

Tenzou felt the protest of his mental gears as he wrenched his mind onto the new topic. “If that’s the case, why doesn’t he just talk to us? Whoever left us the book clearly wants us to solve this.”

Kawaguchi tried to shrug again and Tenzou wished he wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to die because he’d been shrugged off the side of a cliff. Not today.

“Maybe he’s too scared. But if we keep an eye on him, he might lead us straight to the killer. They must be in pretty close contact so the killer can keep him under control, especially if he suspects that Jun stole the book.”

“I hope he pays a house call tonight,” Tenzou mutters. “I’ve had comfier stakeouts.”

They lapsed into silence for a moment, and then Tenzou had a thought that made him stare at Kawaguchi suspiciously.

“Wait a minute,” he said slowly. “On that night when you tried to win your bet, what would you have done if I’d wanted to take you home with me?”

“Oh, hey, look. Someone’s coming out of the house.”

“Kawaguchi...”

But there really was someone leaving the house, and Tenzou leaned forwards for a better view. It was Jun’s youngest daughter, Yua.

“What do you think?” Kawaguchi asked. “Should one of us follow her? We can’t assume his family doesn’t know what’s going on.”

Tenzou hesitated. “I still don’t like the idea of splitting up.”

“It’s safe in this spot. No one could have seen us come up here, and I’m pretty sure we’re hidden from view at street level. Besides, we can’t both stay here for too long or Miho will get lonely, so if you want to keep up surveillance for more than a couple of hours, we’ll have to split up eventually.”

That was true. Yua had already vanished from view, although Tenzou knew she must still be on the street. There wasn’t time to deliberate, though.

“OK, I’ll follow her and if nothing happens I’ll go on back to the inn. You stay here for now. Do you still have the calling seal I gave you?”

“Yep.”

Calling seals allowed the most basic form of communication. When one was activated, the others in its set emitted light or heat to alert their owner. Because they couldn’t transmit messages, they were used to alert shinobi that they needed to go to a pre-arranged meeting point or to synchronise actions across a team.

“If you need me, activate it and _do not move_ from here. If nothing’s happened by midnight, I’ll come and relieve you.”

“Such a long time,” Kawaguchi groaned. “Can’t you leave a clone for me to talk to?”

“I’m not wasting chakra to keep you entertained.”

“So stingy.”

Tenzou nudged him into the wall so he’d have room to stand up, ignoring Kawaguchi’s protests, and brought his hands up to make the signs for the body flicker jutsu. He instantly felt relieved at having room to move, and reflected that there were some perks to being captain after all.

  


* * *

  


Forty minutes after the ANBU had found them together, Kakashi and Iruka had been thoroughly scolded and Kakashi had been instructed to change back into some long-sleeved hospital pyjamas. He was still, however, in Iruka’s hospital room, where they were waiting for a messenger to return from the hokage with instructions on how to proceed.

The ANBU who had found them – a woman Kakashi didn’t know, codename Bear – had been fairly lenient, much to Kakashi’s relief. She’d shouted a lot, but hadn’t put any more cuffs on Iruka or arrested Kakashi for impersonating an ANBU. Instead, she’d sent a messenger to ask for permission to allow Iruka to examine Kakashi’s eye, insisting that it was only logical now that they were in the same room together.

Iruka had been appalled when Kakashi had explained that his left eye was not only non-functional but decomposing.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” he’d insisted. “The seals took my chakra and made it act as though it’s yours, but they don’t wire my chakra to specific pathways. It should flow naturally through your circulatory system as a whole. I don’t understand why it’s avoiding your eye.”

“So that’s why Kakashi-san could get through the wards on your door,” Bear had mused. “He has your chakra signature now. Good to know I don’t have to yell at anyone else.”

Since then Iruka had been sitting propped up against the pillows, tugging worriedly at his hair and occasionally almost nodding back to sleep. Kakashi was sitting on a visitor’s chair a good metre away from the bed, restraining himself from reaching out and taking Iruka’s hand or squeezing his knee. Compared to how Iruka looked, Kakashi’s own fatigue felt mild. At no point during the day had he felt the urge to nap, which was a good sign, although the hunger simmered constantly under his skin. By now, however, he had it under control, and no longer felt the all-consuming need to reach out and touch.

They both looked up as the door opened and a second ANBU slipped inside to hand a sheet of paper to Bear, who scanned its contents and then nodded.

“Go fetch Outsuki-sensei.” The ANBU inclined his head and left. “Iruka-san, you can give Kakashi-san a brief physical to try and determine what’s wrong with his eye. The doctor who did Kakashi-san’s physical will be here shortly to give you any data you need.”

“Remember not to touch me,” Kakashi warned as Iruka slid off the bed.

“I know. Tilt up your head and let me see.”

Kakashi stayed seated, keeping very still so as not to accidentally make contact as Iruka leaned in close to examine him.

“It really is dead,” Iruka said, standing up straight again. “If only I had my notes. Kakashi, take your shirt off so I can look at the seals. I've already seen the tattoo,” he added to Bear, who idly waved her assent.

Kakashi dropped his shirt to the floor and Iruka gestured for him to stand up before starting to scan over the seals, pausing every now and then to mutter under his breath. He asked Kakashi to turn around, and then started examining the seals on Kakashi’s back.

“I don’t understand,” he said eventually. “This seal here deals with the chakra flow in your body.” Kakashi craned round to see Iruka pointing somewhere around his shoulder blades. “But from what I can tell, there aren’t any exceptions. I think this symbol here refers to my chakra, and it’s tied in with the symbol representing you. I mean, I had to create that myself and I couldn’t really understand the rules behind it, but it seems to have worked.”

“You had to create a symbol that means me?”

Iruka smiled at him. It was a worn smile, frayed at the edges, but it made Kakashi calmer just to see it.

“It’s on your throat too,” Iruka said. “You can look at it if you have a mirror. There was a base that I think means something like ‘person’ or ‘human’ and then I embellished it with the symbols for ‘lightning’ and ‘power’. I think it’s mostly symbolic, but maybe I should have added a symbol for the sharingan as well. Not that I have access to the Uchiha library, but maybe if I’d thought harder about it...”

There was a light tap on the door, and Bear opened it to let the consulting doctor enter. He hadn’t lost the nervous energy that Kakashi seemed to bring out in him, and he faltered when he noticed the broken cuffs on the floor.

“Outsuki-sensei, this is Umino Iruka. He’s the one who did Kakashi-san’s seals, and we’ve asked him to take a look at the sharingan.”

Outsuki ducked his head at Iruka in what could generously be called a bow. Iruka inclined his own with much more grace.

“Why don’t you tell me what you make of it so far?” Iruka asked.

“Well, I was actually talking to my colleagues a few minutes ago about the issue,” Outsuki started. He remained standing close to Bear and the exit. Iruka frowned, noticing but not understanding. “From what we can see, the chakra has diverted around the eye, although we can’t determine the cause without understanding the seals. Since there’s nothing powering it, it can’t function normally.”

“What do you mean, nothing powering it?” Iruka asked. He gestured for Kakashi to turn back around to face him. “I mean, the loss of chakra would definitely deactivate the sharingan and impair his vision, but it shouldn’t be _dead_. What about the blood vessels, the nerves, all of the biological components?”

Kakashi tensed.

Outsuki stared at Iruka. “You don’t know?”

“About what?”

“Hatake-san isn’t technically alive.” Outsuki glanced nervously at Kakashi. “A better term might be…animate.”

Iruka stared at him, uncomprehending, and then turned back to Kakashi. “What is he talking about? Of course you’re alive, how else could you be here speaking to me?”

Kakashi tried to find a delicate way to phrase his thoughts and couldn’t. He hadn’t cared before now, but faced with Iruka, suddenly everything about himself sounded monstrous.

“He isn’t biologically functioning,” Outsuki explained. “There’s no respiration, no heartbeat, no signs that we would use to scientifically classify a being as alive.”

“That’s not…” Iruka stared at Kakashi as if seeing him for the first time. “That’s not possible.” Then his eyes widened and he muttered, “Extended _animation_.” Louder. “But that’s not what I was trying to do!”

He made a grab for Kakashi’s wrist, and Kakashi darted back out of reach.

“You can’t touch me,” he said softly. “Iruka, it’s true. But it’s all right – you can fix me. You can just change the seals and bring me back properly, right?”

Iruka’s arm was still outstretched towards him.

“I don’t…” He shook his head, as though to clear his thoughts, and retracted his hand. “Yes. Yes, of course, I just need to study more. There must be a way.”

Outsuki cleared his throat. “How long do you think it’ll take for you to figure that out?”

Iruka ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. It won’t be easy. It might take a few weeks. Maybe even –” He glanced nervously at Kakashi. “Maybe months.”

Kakashi wished that someone had taken the time to bring him one of his usual masks, because he didn’t want Iruka to see the expressions that were fighting to take over his face. Months. He could be stuck like this for _months_. He’d been assuming that Iruka would have all the answers, but now he realised how naïve that had been. Of course it wasn’t simple to bring back the dead, otherwise people would do it all the time. He’d been ignoring the wrongness of his body as best he could, but now he became conscious of the horrible stillness and the lack of feeling.

“Unfortunately, we can’t wait that long to deal with Hatake-san’s eye,” Outsuki said. “The decomposition will continue, and may cause infection in the – the preserved tissue.”

Kakashi raised a hand to his eye, overcome with horror.

“Shit,” Iruka whispered. “I don’t know how to fix it. It could take me days to figure out what the problem is.”

“If Iruka-san can’t do anything, what’s the other option?” Bear asked.

Outsuki shifted from foot to foot. “Since we don’t know what effect it would have on the surrounding flesh, we’d have to treat it as though Hatake-san were a living patient. If we can’t revive it, then…well, and we’d need to move quickly, as soon as possible, really…”

“Spit it out,” Kakashi said flatly.

“We’d have to cut it out,” Outsuki said in one breath.

There was a long silence.

“Absolutely not,” Kakashi said.

“What’s the time frame here?” Bear asked.

“Really, we need to have made a decision by the end of today, but certainly by tomorrow morning so that we can operate in the afternoon.”

“That’s not enough _time_ ,” Iruka broke in. He sat down heavily on the bed.

“There must be something else,” Kakashi said. “Can’t you do something to stop it rotting? I mean, the rest of my body isn’t rotting, so if you just took that part of the seal and put it on my eye…” He trailed off as Iruka shook his head helplessly.

“Even if I could find the right part of the seal and modify it, I still don’t know why it’s avoiding your eye so I might not be able to change the part that’s stopping it from working. And there are other problems with placing another seal on your body the same way I did the rest. I could only activate them because your chakra pathways were empty and could be used as a conduit for my chakra, but now that your system is working again, it might not be possible to activate a seal in the same way, or it might only work with my chakra, and I don’t have enough to spare. There are so many possibilities and we don’t have time to test them all.”

“But I can’t lose the sharingan,” Kakashi insisted. “Not if there’s any way to save it.”

“It might be possible to preserve it outside the body,” Outsuki offered. “Of course, there are usually laws about how long we can keep body parts with bloodline genetics, but considering the circumstances, the hokage might allow it. And in that case, we could attempt to transplant it a second time if Iruka-san succeeds, but that would depend wholly on the condition of the eye. For that to be an option, we’d need to remove it today.”

Kakashi closed his eyes. He’d be damned if he gave up his sharingan, but despite Outsuki’s talk of decisions, no one was giving him another option.

“Let them,” Iruka blurted out. “Let them cut it out.” Kakashi snapped his head around to stare at him, and Iruka held up his hands, placatingly. “Hear me out. I know it’s awful and I’m so, so sorry that I don’t know how to solve this, but isn’t it better to have it removed now and have the chance of implanting it again later than losing it completely? I know without a doubt that there’s nothing I can do today, and no one else understands the seals in the way I do. If I can’t save your eye, nobody can.”

Kakashi’s shoulders slumped. “Fine.”

All three occupants of the room stared at him, clearing expecting him to fight more.

“Are you sure?” Bear asked. “You have a little while to think about it.”

“No, Iruka’s right. There’s no other option.”

Iruka half rose, as if to come to him, and then remembered again that they couldn’t touch, and lowered himself back down to the bed.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“It’s OK.” But it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. He took a deep breath, just to try and feel normal, but regretted it in the stillness after the sigh. He turned to Outsuki.

“Cut it out,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  


* * *

  


Tenzou moved stealthily from rooftop to rooftop, following Jun’s daughter. From what he could remember, Yua was seventeen years old and spent her days helping her mother to carve wooden jewellery, which the two of them took to the large port town twice a month to sell.

The streets in Shukunegi all looked the same to Tenzou, and so he’d lost his bearings by the time Yua stopped outside a house and knocked on the door. A woman answered: the older sister, Aina. Tenzou heard a burst of Water Country language as they greeted each other, and then the door closed and the street lapsed back into silence.

Well, there was nothing suspicious about visiting family. Tenzou debated on whether he should stick around and watch the house for a while longer, but decided against it. Miho had been alone for too long as it was. Waiting to track Yua back home again was a waste of time.

When he arrived back at the inn, he found Miho sitting in the pub where he’d left her, but by this time she’d managed to join a table of villagers and was talking easily with them. There were several empty glasses on the table and Tenzou wondered how Miho had managed to avoid being bought a drink. What would happen if she decided to eat? Would food pass undigested through her body or would it sit in her stomach and rot?

Miho looked up and saw him in the doorway, and Tenzou nodded towards the stairway before heading up towards the lodging area of the building. He let himself into the bedroom and left the door unlocked, but didn’t remove his mask until Miho entered a couple of minutes later and locked the door behind her.

“Where’s Kawaguchi?”

“I left him watching Jun-san’s house. I’ll go relieve him later.”

Tenzou unclipped his arm guards and stored them neatly under the bed, then took off his chest plate and stored it alongside them. He kept the mask on the bedside table so that he could reach it easily if anyone came to the door.

Miho sat on the other bed.

“I heard something interesting while you were gone.”

Tenzou looked up. “Go on.”

“I asked whether any shinobi had been in town recently, and apparently they rarely see shinobi here, but not too long ago a kunoichi passed through. No one could quite remember her name – Hagiwara, Hiwatari, something like that – but get this. She was looking for Jun-san.”

Tenzou sat up straighter. “When was she in town?”

“She arrived a couple of weeks before that body was stolen, and apparently she stayed for four or five days.”

“Was she Mist?”

“No, that’s the thing. She was Konoha.”

Tenzou frowned. “But Jun-san said he’d never been to Konoha. So how would he know one of our kunoichi?”

Miho leaned back on her arms. “Apparently she was some kind of scholar or historian, but I heard a few different versions of what she might have been hoping to gain from Jun-san. You know what gossip is like.”

“Physical description?”

“Early fifties, dressed in civvies, no hitae-ate but wearing a chuunin vest and carrying weapons. The villagers described her as pleasant but somehow intense.”

“Height, hair colour, ethnicity?”

Miho gave him a look. “I can’t ask things like that when I’m posing as a civilian. Come on, Tenzou, I thought you’d made at least that much progress with undercover work.”

Tenzou looked away, embarrassed. Infiltration was his biggest weakness, and although no one had explicitly told him so, he knew for a fact that this was why he’d been put on a team with Kawaguchi.

“I actually wanted to talk to you about something else as well,” Miho said. “It’s about what happened to me.”

She was sitting up more formally now and watching him seriously. Tenzou gestured for her to keep speaking and she took a moment to collect her thoughts.

“You said that eleven days passed between my death and the day you found me in the stream.” Tenzou nodded confirmation. “I don’t remember any further back than when I came to my senses not far from that spot, maybe half an hour before you and Kawaguchi turned up. What’s strange is that I was standing when I became conscious again.”

“That’s not possible if you were dead or unconscious before that moment.”

“Exactly. And something else I realised last night when I had time to think was how fresh my body is.”

It took Tenzou a moment to work out what she meant. “There’s no decay. If you’d been dead for almost two weeks and then resurrected, your body should have started to degrade.”

“The three bodies that the killer experimented on before me were all found the day after they disappeared, as though he wanted to use the seals while the body was in the freshest state possible. So isn’t it logical to assume that I was also reanimated on the same day I was killed? Maybe during the night, but certainly before morning, if we extrapolate from the pattern.”

It made sense, but at the same time it raised more questions than it answered.

“There’s so much we don’t know about the seals,” Tenzou said. “Including whether they were changed or improved after that first day. Maybe at first you were animate but not conscious, or maybe something happened on the day we found you that caused your amnesia. There’s no real way to guess while we can’t read the seals.”

He wondered whether Iruka or T&I had made any progress with the book. There’d been no word from Sandaime either way, but then it would take at least a couple of days for even the fastest summons or messenger to cover the distance between Konoha and Shukunegi.

“It worries me,” Miho said. “And it frustrates me to think that during that time I must have seen the killer’s face. Why wasn’t he there when I woke up? Did I escape or did he let me go?”

“You think he’s planning something?”

“He must be. Isn’t it too perfect that I regained my consciousness right before you and Kawaguchi happened to wander by?”

It was definitely a huge coincidence if there was no intent behind it. During his years in ANBU, Tenzou had seen some colossal coincidences that were just that, but he also knew that nine times out of ten, there was order behind the chaos.

“We need to be careful,” Miho warned. “Whatever this sicko wants from me, he’s not done yet.”

  


* * *

  


At about ten o’clock, Miho looked up and said, “Let me take over Kawaguchi’s watch.”

Tenzou had just woken from a short nap he’d taken in preparation for overnight surveillance, and he sat back against the pillows and frowned. “What?”

“Let me go watch Jun-san’s house.”

Miho was sitting on the windowsill again. When he’d settled down to sleep she’d been sharpening his kunais, the rhythmic scrape of stone on metal lulling him to sleep, and there was now a row of sharp knives laid out immaculately on the other bed.

“Why would I let you do that?” Tenzou asked. “You can’t go running off on your own around the village. What would you do if something did happen? You have no chakra, no way to defend yourself or summon me or Kawaguchi through the calling seals.”

“But what’s the point in the two of you going without sleep when I don’t need it?” Miho countered. “I’d just watch, I promise. If anything happened, I’d keep my distance and come back and get you two when I knew what the situation was.”

She was earnest, and Tenzou was surprised at how much.

“A few hours ago you were convinced the killer was going to come back for you.”

“He probably is,” Miho agreed. “But that doesn’t mean I should stay holed up in this room all the time. If anything, I’m more at risk here since everyone knows I’m staying at the inn, and I’m putting you and Kawaguchi in danger by being around you all the time. We already know that this guy is capable of taking out an ANBU captain, and we can’t prepare countermeasures since we don’t know how he did it.”

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and protect you.”

“What’s left to protect?” Miho snapped. “The worst has already happened. I might not be a full shinobi anymore, but I can still be useful. Treat me the same way you’d treat any other jounin-level taijutsu specialist – I still have my strength and all the knowledge that comes with being shinobi. I’m a resource, not a victim.”

Tenzou slid his legs off the bed, turning his body fully round to face her.

“What’s brought this on all of a sudden?”

“It’s not sudden. I’ve just been trying to repress the need to do something. It doesn’t come naturally to me, sitting around and staying safe, especially when I know there’s something I could do to help the team. Besides, do you know how boring it is to sit quietly and watch you sleep? If I have to do it much more I’ll go crazy.”

She was leaning forwards, her forearms resting on her thighs, watching him intently. Tenzou understood where she was coming from, but he wasn’t convinced.

“You’re still at high risk from a person who’s already attacked you. I have to take that into account.”

“There’s nothing more he can do to hurt me. I’m already dead and I can’t feel pain.”

“You’re not dead,” Tenzou said, louder than he’d intended. “You’re not dead,” he said again, quieter. “We can fix you, but not if you’re taken away or murdered a second time.”

“I’m willing to take that risk. You don’t get to tell me how much my life is worth, Tenzou, only I can do that.”

They stared each other down.

“You can’t use chakra to move over the rooftops.”

“It’s the middle of the night. No one will see if I’m careful.”

“The spot Kawaguchi’s using to watch the Go house is only accessible if you climb the cliff wall using chakra.”

“There’ll be other vantage points, especially in the dark where I can hide. I can signal Kawaguchi from the ground and set up somewhere else before he leaves so he can tell me if I’m hidden from the street.”

Tenzou tapped a finger on his knee.

“I’ll take weapons,” Miho added. “I can defend myself without jutsu, if worst comes to worst. But why would anyone come looking for me outside Jun-san’s house tonight anyway? I’ll be safest if no one knows where I am.”

Tenzou sighed softly. “You won’t be any less bored on surveillance, you know.”

Miho smiled, knowing she’d won.

“At least I’ll be bored while doing what I’m meant to do.”

  


* * *

  


It was getting on in the evening by the time Kakashi was finally wheeled on a gurney into the operating room, covered by a sheet so that no one would realise Hatake Kakashi was back from the dead. Kakashi had been sceptical that no one would find it strange to see a corpse being wheeled into an operating theatre – surely most dead people were past saving – but Outsuki had pointed out that the organs for transplant had to come from somewhere.

Kakashi sat up and moved onto the operating table. Only the surgeon – the seals expert who’d failed to come up with a way to save his eye – and an aide were present. There was no anaesthetist since he felt no pain, and the lack of blood flow made it impossible to drug him in any case. Kakashi wondered if he would bleed at all, or if he would heal. The current plan was to use a healing jutsu immediately after the surgery rather than to risk it.

While the doctor lined up her scalpels and scissors, the aide slicked Kakashi’s hair back off his face with some kind of gel and then taped a gauze pad over his working eye. His other eyelid was gently pulled up and something was put in place to hold his eye open.

“Can you feel this?” the doctor asked.

She was pressing something against his finger. Kakashi could feel the pressure, and even the sharpness of what he presumed was a scalpel, but no pain.

“Yes, but it doesn’t hurt.”

“I’m going to need you to keep completely still during the procedure. If at any point you feel distressed or uncomfortable, let me know immediately.”

“I’ll be fine.”

It was much harder to tell if he was nervous with no pounding heart or rapid breaths. The surgeon placed a latex-covered hand on his face.

“I’m starting now,” she said grimly. “I hope you're prepared, Hatake-san. This isn’t going to be pleasant.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently in addition to the holy trinity of ANBU, KakaIru and seals, there’s another commonality to my plotfics: cutting out eyes. What the hell is wrong with me?


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Serie11, who kindly volunteered to beta this fic and made sure that this chapter was properly edited by giving some wonderful feedback. The proofreading is all still me, however, so if you spot any typos, it's my bad.
> 
> I made a slight edit to the last chapter after it was pointed out that Iruka would have seen Kakashi's ANBU tattoo when he was painting the seals on the body, and obviously ANBU would have realised this. It's only a small change so there's no need to re-read anything, but for future reference, everyone knows that Iruka is now aware of Kakashi's ANBU status. Sorry for the slip-up.

Miho returned to the inn a little after eight o’clock. Tenzou had been awake for an hour, fretting that something might have happened, and Kawaguchi was still in bed and mostly asleep.

“Nothing suspicious,” Miho reported, perching on the end of Tenzou’s bed. “There was no activity during the night, and the only person who left the house was Jun-san when he went to work this morning.”

“We should go back and talk to him again today,” Tenzou said. “Maybe after his shift, when he’s home with his family. Seeing their reactions might give us a clue.”

“If we’re not moving out until five,” Kawaguchi said, cracking an eye open, “can I stay here all morning?”

“No.”

Kawaguchi grumbled something unflattering about morning people and buried his face in the pillows.

“We still have plenty to do,” Tenzou said to his unresponsive form. “If I bring you a coffee, will you get up?”

“You’re his captain,” Miho scolded. “Just kick him out of bed.”

“That’s an abuse of power,” Kawaguchi said into the pillow.

A knock sounded at the door.

Tenzou picked up his mask and fitted it into place as Miho ducked down behind the bed. This wasn’t the sort of village where a woman could be alone in a bedroom with two men and not be talked about. Kawaguchi merely tugged the duvet up over his head.

The innkeeper was standing in the corridor, and he held up an envelope with _ANBU_ scrawled across the front.

“This was slipped under the door sometime during the night.”

Tenzou took the envelope and looked it over. He couldn’t sense any chakra from inside, meaning it didn’t contain a primed seal, although there could be some other kind of trap.

“Did you see who left it?”

“No, I found it when I was opening up.”

Tenzou thanked him and brought the envelope inside, removing his mask again. Miho sat back on the bed and watched him curiously.

“A letter?”

“Maybe.” Tenzou used the blade of a kunai to slit the envelope open, and then tipped it up and let the contents slide out. There was a piece of folded paper, and a glance inside the envelope confirmed that there was nothing more sinister.

He unfolded the paper, where a short note was penned. Tenzou read it out loud.

“I have information about the Go family. Meet me today at 2 o’clock behind the graveyard.”

“Unsigned, I presume,” Miho said.

“Naturally.”

“I guess word got around that you spoke to Jun-san again. But why go to all the trouble of leaving a letter and arranging a secret meeting? It’s not like they don’t know where we’re staying, and no one would know exactly what they wanted to speak about.”

“Because they’re someone close to Jun,” Kawaguchi’s muffled voice said from the lump in the bedclothes. “That’s why they know something, and that’s why they can’t be seen talking to us. If news got back to Jun, he’d figure it out.”

Miho and Tenzou exchanged a look.

“Get out of bed,” Miho said. “Or I’ll make you.”

“Why? We don’t have to be anywhere until two.”

Miho crossed to stand beside the bed.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, wanting to sleep half the day?”

“No.”

She took hold of the covers.

“Don’t do it,” Kawaguchi said.

“Last chance to be a mature adult and get up by yourself.”

“Can’t I be a mature adult and make my own decisions?

“Not before noon.”

Miho yanked away the duvet to a muffled _nooo_ from the pillow. Tenzou raised a hand to hide his smile. This was how Team Phoenix was supposed to be, and he’d be damned if he let anyone take this away from them again.

  


* * *

  


Kakashi sat and watched the sun rise.

He hadn’t slept. He’d tried, for two or three hours, and then had paced the room or sat or looked out of the window, and for half an hour or so he had simply stood in the centre of the room, completely still, staring at the wall.

He couldn’t sleep and his eye was gone. The surgeon had used a healing jutsu to seal up the veins and stem the bleeding, but there was one more session needed to heal it completely. Kakashi kept raising his hand to the gauze pad, touching it lightly because if he pushed, he could feel the hole where his eye had been. The first and only time he’d done that, he’d flinched his hand away as if burnt and then sat very still for a long time.

It didn’t hurt. It didn’t even itch. He felt no different from before. Even the limited vision was normal for him after so many years of having to cover the Sharingan. Kakashi wished he could feel something, anything that would clearly mark the difference between being whole and being mutilated. In the darkest hours of the night, he would have welcomed pain.

The night had stretched endlessly, and he felt like he’d aged years between dusk and dawn. His body was tired, but his mind was alert, able to think for hours on end, even when he wanted to switch it off. He’d wanted to leave this tiny room, to stalk the hospital corridors like a ghost and trace the path back to Iruka’s room, to wake him and ask _will you still love me?_ Or sit and watch him sleep and remember a time when he could have reached out and touched Iruka’s face without hurting him. But if he left his room a second time without permission, he might not be allowed to see Iruka at all.

Outside, the sun rose, achingly slow. Kakashi sat on the bed and watched it, hunched over in a way that should have made his back ache. His fingers grazed the covering over his empty eye socket. Why had he let them do it? What had possessed him to lie still on the operating table and feel the tug and slice and not try and stop them? Logically, he knew it was the only sensible choice, but in the cold light of dawn, he felt a long way from logic.

Through the wall he felt Iruka, faint but magnetic. His body’s need for chakra was quieter now, so that sometimes he thought of Iruka and wasn’t sure if the longing he felt was love or hunger.

As the faint noise of the nurses’ morning rounds drifted through from the main ward, it dawned on Kakashi that he wouldn’t sleep again for a very long time.

  


* * *

  


There was nobody in the graveyard when Tenzou and Kawaguchi climbed the path heading out of the village at almost two o’clock. Due to the upwards slope of the land here, where it started to lead up into the cliffs, almost the whole of Shukunegi could be seen from the graveyard as a cluster of wooden roofs leading down to the sea. It was probably a beautiful view in the summer, but today the sky and the sea were grey, and the way the houses were huddled together no longer seemed cosy, but instead suggested fear.

“This might be a trap,” Tenzou said when they were nearly at the thin cluster of trees behind the graveyard.

“It’s a bit late to say that now.”

“Just make sure not to drop your guard, no matter who we see. The killer caught us out with a henge once.” Tenzou scanned the trees as he spoke but couldn’t make out any movement. “Would you be able to sense a high functioning henge?”

“Not if it’s been done properly. Once the body has been physically changed, your natural chakra flow keeps it active, so there’s no extra chakra usage to sense. That’s why you can’t tell even if you touch me when I’m using mine. Did you think you were that bad at sensing?”

“I just thought you were really good.”

Kawaguchi laughed. “Everyone who uses proper henges is really good. Oh, and there’s something else you might find interesting. Shinobi who are good with seals tend to be skilled with high functioning henges.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because both need very good chakra control. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way around. I can use seals with a lot of accuracy but I only know the basic theory so I’m no better than you at creating them.”

It struck Tenzou that the killer was endowed with all the worst skill sets for them to face. “So what you’re saying is that the killer has a huge advantage.”

“Depends how many mistakes he’s made along the way. Don’t forget, we’re pretty good at kicking ass and taking names.”

They reached the treeline, and as they stepped off the path, Tenzou finally noticed the woman. She was standing behind the thick trunk of a tree, so that she was only visible once they’d passed the graveyard, and she watched as they approached. It took Tenzou a moment to recognise her, and then he realised with surprise that it was Aina, Jun’s eldest daughter.

“Thank you for coming,” she said when they drew level with her. “I’m sorry to ask you out here, but I couldn’t talk to you in the village.”

“Your father doesn’t know you’re meeting us,” Kawaguchi said.

“None of my family does. Please don’t tell them.”

“We won’t,” Tenzou promised.

Aina was a few years younger than Tenzou, maybe twenty or twenty-one, but she was already married and lived with her husband outside the Go family home. Her accent wasn’t as strong as her father’s, but she wore a pendant around her neck carved like the sea serpent god Tenzou had seen in the shrine, and she fiddled with it as she spoke.

“I know you think Papa had something to do with those murders, and I understand why. I didn’t speak to you when you were here the first time because I didn’t believe he could know anything. Even now I don’t want to believe it, but…” She trailed off and looked away, down towards the rows of graves.

“Something happened?” Tenzou asked.

“Not exactly. Nothing concrete, but for a while I’ve thought that he’s been acting strangely. Not just Papa, but my mother and sister too. Papa and Matka have been stressed, I think. I visit them a lot, and for the past few weeks they’ve seemed less happy, and the house always feels tense. Yua still smiles like she used to, but it’s distant. And she seems – different. I can’t figure out exactly how, but I think maybe something happened between her and my parents. They don’t speak to her much anymore, or at least not while I’m there.”

“When did they start acting differently?” Kawaguchi asked.

Aina thought for a moment. “It was maybe when that kunoichi came to ask Papa about our family.”

Tenzou felt excitement bubble in his gut and resisted the urge to exchange a glance with Kawaguchi.

“Can you remember her name?” he asked.

“Hiwatari. I don’t remember her given name.”

“Why was she interested in your family?”

“I’m sure Papa must have told you that the Go family have been seals masters for generations. Papa said she was asking about some seals that might have been created by his father.”

“Did he tell you anything about the seals?” Kawaguchi asked. His tone betrayed nothing, but Tenzou knew he must be feeling the same excitement.

“No, he was very vague about it. He said he couldn’t help her, but she kept coming and asking him questions. She was in Shukunegi for five days and she spoke to him every day. Then suddenly she left and no one knew why. Papa said she’d given up, but I think – I think that was when I first noticed something was wrong with him. He seemed – upset. Very upset. But he was trying to hide it and when I asked, he said there was nothing wrong.”

“And what exactly makes you think this is connected to the murders?”

Aina was silent, staring down at the graves again, a wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows.

“That’s the other reason why I wanted to talk to you,” she said at last. “Back when we lived in Mist, there was a story about my family. My father always said it was a fairytale, and that I shouldn’t listen to it, but the other children at school heard it from their parents or older brothers and sisters, and they used to bully me for it.”

“What was the story?” Tenzou urged.

“It was about Papa’s father, my grandpapa, who was a genius seals researcher called Go Kin. He lived outside Mist in a small town on the main island, and he was married young, but after only a year together, his wife died. He dealt with her body himself and didn’t invite anyone to the funeral, and since then he became a recluse, barely leaving his house and producing very little work. For seven years, hardly anybody saw him, but then one day a messenger boy went up to the house to deliver a letter and glimpsed Kin’s dead wife through the window, heavily pregnant.”

“He’d brought her back to life?” Tenzou blurted out.

“I don’t know,” Aina said. “The children who bullied me said she was a monster, and that my father was the son of a corpse, but beyond that point there were many different versions of the story. Kin and his wife were chased out of the village and accepted into Mist on condition that Kin work for the Mizukage, or because they thought Kin’s child would have some kind of power, or because they didn’t want an enemy discovering how to raise the dead.”

“Did you ever meet your grandparents?” Kawaguchi asked.

“I have vague memories of them from when I was very young, but they’d both died before I was six. Papa never speaks about them, but I always thought that they were very cold people. I don’t remember ever seeing either of them smile. Looking back on it, they were probably hated or feared by the village because of the story, and that’s why they were so unhappy.”

It was hard to know whether there was any truth to the tale, and how much of it had been embellished over the years. It was certainly impossible that Jun’s father had brought his wife back with the seals in the book. Seven years was far too long to wait before resurrecting her, and there was no way she could have borne him a child if she’d been in the same state as Miho was now. Still, Tenzou couldn’t stop the spark of hope at the possibility that more perfect seals existed. Seals that could bring Miho entirely back to life.

“How did they die?” Kawaguchi asked. Tenzou looked at him. It wasn’t the question he’d have asked.

Aina closed her fist around the god-shaped pendant.

“They killed themselves,” she said.

  


* * *

  


It was almost lunchtime when Kakashi was told out of the blue that he was being discharged from the hospital. His eye socket had been completely healed earlier that morning but the false eye that would be inserted was being created specially to fit his face and wouldn’t be ready for a few days. For the time being, he was wearing a simple black eyepatch of the sort he’d sometimes used over his Sharingan when out of uniform. He was trying not to think about it and failing.

An ANBU called Hawk had brought some of his clothes, which meant that ANBU had broken into his house, but Kakashi couldn’t bring himself to care. He was especially relieved to find one of his masks in the pile of civilian clothes; he couldn’t remember ever going so long without having worn one. The soft fabric clung to his face, as reassuring as ANBU armour had once been.

Before he was allowed to leave, Outsuki had informed him, he would have to meet with Sandaime in Iruka’s room, although Kakashi wasn’t sure if this meant that Iruka was also being released or if Sandaime simply wanted to speak to them at the same time. Currently, Kakashi was being once again wheeled through the hospital on a gurney and covered with a sheet, disguised as a corpse. Kakashi was seized by the urge to move or speak, anything that would confirm his existence. He clamped down on the impulse. He knew when they reached Iruka’s room because he felt Iruka’s chakra signature envelope him like a thin, soft blanket, and then he heard Iruka’s loud exclamation.

“You can’t move Kakashi through the building like that,” Iruka spluttered as Kakashi flipped aside the sheet and stood up. “After what happened, you’re treating him like a _body_? That’s the most insensitive –”

“Iruka,” Sandaime interrupted, and Iruka fell silent, but shot one last poisonous look at Outsuki before turning to Kakashi and softening his expression. His concern would have made Kakashi feel better if he wasn’t so conscious of the eyepatch and what it was hiding.

Besides Iruka and Sandaime, Bear was also present, and the room was quite cramped, especially with the gurney, which Outsuki had pushed against the wall before leaving. Kakashi gave Iruka a once over and was relieved to see that he was also dressed in his own clothes and no longer cuffed. The dressings on his arms had been removed. He still looked pale and tired, but even severe chakra depletion wasn’t dangerous as long as no more chakra was lost, so as long as Kakashi kept his distance, Iruka would be fine.

“I was just telling Iruka how we’ve decided to deal with this situation,” Sandaime said. He also looked tired. “You’re both being discharged from the hospital so that Iruka can work on your seals, but on the condition that he stay under house arrest.”

“What?” Kakashi demanded. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s OK,” Iruka said.

“It’s not OK! You shouldn’t be treated like a criminal for saving my life.”

“We can’t overlook the assault of an ANBU,” Sandaime said flatly. “Not to mention the other crimes Iruka committed to bring you back. We’re not scheduling a trial for the foreseeable future, because that wouldn’t be fair to you, but if and when Iruka cures you, we’ll make a decision on how to handle his case.”

“Assault of an ANBU?” Kakashi echoed. He paused, and then turned to Iruka. “Did you win?”

“Kakashi,” Sandaime snapped.

“Boar-senpai was incapacitated but not seriously harmed,” Bear supplied. Kakashi thought he heard a note of amusement in her otherwise professional tone.

“As for you, Kakashi,” Sandaime said, “we cancelled your funeral yesterday but so far haven’t announced the reason why. We’ve decided, however, that it’s for the best to tell people that there was a mistake and that although you were very close to death, you did in fact survive your ordeal. A morgue worker discovered that you still had a pulse and since then you’ve had a miraculous recovery. Neither of you are to mention the seals, and I’ll expect you to cover them up. If anybody does happen to see them, do not mention their function. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Kakashi said curtly. “You want to keep it a secret so that no one else tries to do the same thing. I get it.”

Sandaime exchanged a quick glance with Bear.

“Or there’s something else?” Kakashi asked.

“The book of seals Iruka used to revive you was retrieved on an S class ANBU mission outside of Konoha,” Bear said. “Someone had been killing civilians to test the seals. It’s possible that the killer will try to track down the book, and we want to prevent him finding it at all costs.”

“So far only a very few people know of the book’s existence, and even fewer know that it’s in Iruka’s possession,” Sandaime said. “Even so, we’ve decided that assigning the two of you a protection detail would be the best course of action. Bear and Hawk will be watching Iruka’s flat and following you, Kakashi, when you leave the building. For the time being, however, we’d prefer it if you could stay in the same place as much as possible.”

Iruka sat up a little straighter, flustered. “Are you ordering Kakashi to move in with me? Isn’t that a bit…?”

“That’s too dangerous,” Kakashi interrupted. “My seals drain Iruka’s chakra when I touch him and you want us to spend all our time together in a small space? We should stay apart for at least a couple of days until his chakra levels are healthy again.”

Iruka looked down at the bed. Kakashi was aware that on some level he’d just rejected Iruka, but this wasn’t the time for a personal conversation. That could come later, when they were alone.

“I’m sure you both have the capacity to be in the same space without touching each other,” Bear said dryly. “From a security standpoint, it’s much easier for us to protect you if you’re in the same place. We have to consider the possibility that you might be targeted as well, Kakashi-san, as an example of a successful subject.”

Iruka bristled and drew himself up to argue again, but Kakashi caught his eye and shook his head. He didn’t like being discussed like a science project, but they all had bigger problems.

“Where’s the book now?” Iruka asked instead. “And my notes.”

“Hawk or I will deliver them when you’re home.”

Which didn’t answer Iruka’s question, Kakashi noticed. It hadn’t escaped him that their ‘security detail’ would double as the enforcers of Iruka’s house arrest. He hoped that he at least hadn’t lost Sandaime’s trust. If they’d become involved in an ANBU level mission gone bad, the last thing he wanted was to be kept out of the loop.

“Which ANBU retrieved the book?” he asked, just to test it.

“That mission is classified,” Sandaime said flatly. “The details are above your clearance level.”

Out of the loop it was then. Wonderful.

“Kakashi-san, we don’t want you to be seen until we’ve formally announced that you’re still alive,” Bear said. “I’m going to escort you both back to Iruka-san’s house now, but we’re going to take a cart and you’re going to hide your face.”

“You mean more than I already do?”

“Before that,” Iruka said, “can you call the doctor back? I wanted to ask him about Kakashi’s eye.”

Kakashi became conscious of three gazes coming to rest of his eyepatch. He tried not to squirm.

“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s all healed. No problems.”

“Can I see it?”

Kakashi’s system no longer released adrenaline, but the alarm was no less real.

“Why would you want to look at that? There’s nothing to see.”

Iruka stood up and Kakashi tried to take a step back. His ankle collided with the gurney.

“I just want to make sure it’s been healed properly.”

“You’re not a medic, you wouldn’t know either way.”

It only took two steps for Iruka to cross the space between them in the small room. He stopped a foot away, too close for comfort. Kakashi was very conscious that they must not touch.

“Let me see it.”

Kakashi raised a hand and lifted the eyepatch. And then he realised what he’d done and slammed it back down.

“What the fuck? No!”

Iruka frowned, confused. “I’ve already seen it now. Lift it up again.”

Kakashi did, and then yanked it back down and moved his hands away from his face, gripping the side of the gurney behind him. Panic was rising. He hadn’t meant to show Iruka and he didn’t _want_ to show Iruka, so what the fuck was happening?

Iruka started to speak again, and Bear clamped a hand over his mouth.

“Kakashi-san,” she said slowly. “Why did you take off the eyepatch just now?”

“I don’t know,” Kakashi snapped. “I didn’t mean to.” If Iruka hadn’t been standing so close, he might have tried to flee the room, fuck the whole plan of keeping his survival a secret for now. But the risk was too high that they might come into contact, and he _must not touch_.

“Interesting,” Bear murmured.

"Iruka," Sandaime said slowly. "Tell Kakashi to do something else. Kakashi, don’t do what he says.”

Iruka pulled away from Bear’s hand and shot Sandaime a bewildered look. “Tell him to do what?”

“Something simple.”

Iruka hesitated for a moment. “Sit down.”

Kakashi folded his legs under him and sat on the floor. Then he realised what had happened, and more importantly _why_.

Sandaime was looking sharply at Iruka. “Were you aware that the seals would give you influence over the person you resurrected?”

“Influence?” Iruka was still staring at Kakashi, who was scrambling back to his feet. “What are you talking about?”

But Kakashi understood.

“You tell me what to do and I have to…” He couldn’t shape his mouth around the word _obey_.

“But that’s.” Iruka raised a hand to his mouth as the full implication sunk in. “Why would that be built into the seals? I don’t understand.”

“Did you ever stop to think that perhaps the person who created the seals had a different aim than you?” Sandaime asked quietly.

Iruka’s hand stayed over his mouth, as though he were afraid of what he might say.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Kakashi believed him, but that didn’t make it OK. Even if Iruka swore never to make him do anything, there was too much potential for commands to accidentally slip out. He cast his mind back to the day before, trying to remember what Iruka had said to him, trying to figure out why he hadn’t seen it in their first conversation.

Beside Iruka, Bear swore softly.

“How many more rules are there that we don’t know about?”

“I trust you not to abuse this,” Sandaime said, “but this does change things. Be very careful, Iruka.”

And then Kakashi stopped listening. He’d remembered.

_Let them cut it out_.

  


* * *

  


Iruka was still reeling from the conversation in his hospital room by the time they arrived back at his flat. Kakashi had been very quiet ever since he’d learnt that Iruka could command him, or perhaps since Iruka had accidentally forced him to remove the eyepatch. They needed to have a conversation, but Iruka was tamping down on everything he wanted to say, and he got the feeling that Kakashi was also holding back until they were alone. Bear had escorted them as far as the main entrance of his block of flats and then had disappeared, presumably to find a good vantage point of Iruka’s front door.

There was a lift in Iruka’s building, which he usually never used, but today he felt drained enough that he might not manage the two flights of stairs. Kakashi didn’t ride up with him, and instead disappeared up the stairwell with barely a word.

It was distressing, the way Kakashi was keeping his distance. Iruka understood that they couldn’t touch, but it felt as though Kakashi was being overcautious – an accidental brush of skin wouldn’t kill him. It stung when Kakashi rounded the corner of the stairwell and stopped dead when he saw Iruka waiting for him, not moving until Iruka had turned and taken three steps down the walkway towards his flat.

Kakashi didn’t speak to him until Iruka had unlocked the front door and they’d both stepped inside.

“Iruka,” he said, and then hesitated. He hadn’t pulled down his mask like he usually did when they were alone, and Iruka couldn’t make out his expression. “Can we talk – about this?”

“Of course.” Iruka hadn’t realised how tense he was until the relief bubbled up. They would talk, and then everything would be better. He was about to suggest they go through to the lounge, but then looked down as he toed off his sandals and froze mid-movement.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

“Iruka?”

But Iruka ignored him and darted down the hallway, almost kicking the small pair of shoes that sat in the front entrance. He was too weak to properly sense chakra, so he opened each door that he passed, frantically scanning the rooms. He found Naruto curled up on Iruka’s side of the double bed.

How could he have forgotten? He’d been so fixated on Kakashi that it had completely slipped his mind that Naruto had stayed over on the night he’d gone down to the morgue. That had been – Iruka felt like he might be sick – two days ago.

Naruto sat bolt upright on the bed when Iruka appeared in the doorway.

“Naruto.” The words ran out. No apologies would be enough. He’d forgotten about a _child_.

He went to the bed and sat down. Naruto huddled away from him.

“I didn’t mean to leave you alone. I was in the hospital.” Iruka bit his tongue sharply. The first thing he did was offer _excuses_. How pathetic.

He reached out, and Naruto grabbed him by the wrist and made a soft, pained sound.

“Iruka-sensei, did you – do something?”

Iruka looked down. Naruto was holding his left arm, the one he’d cut to ribbons and that the doctors had stitched back together. The angry red lines were still raw on his palm and wrist and forearm. Iruka really looked at them for the first time, and realised what Naruto was asking him.

“No! No, it wasn’t like that.”

He tried to reach for Naruto again, but Naruto flinched away.

“I woke up and you weren’t here,” he said, voice thick. “I waited all morning, and then I went to Kakashi-sensei’s funeral and they told me it wasn’t going to happen, but they wouldn’t tell me why. And then I started asking people where you were, but nobody would tell me. Not even ANBU. Not even the Hokage – he wouldn’t even see me!”

“I’m so sorry,” Iruka whispered. “I had to go. I had to help Kakashi. Please understand.”

Naruto twisted on the bed, suddenly furious. “Kakashi-sensei is dead!”

“No I’m not.”

They both whirled around. Kakashi was standing in the doorway. Naruto threw himself back against the headboard, pressing himself hard against the wood.

“I’m not a ghost,” Kakashi said quietly. “I wasn’t dead. They were wrong.”

They couldn’t tell Naruto the truth. The thought shocked Iruka. He wasn’t sure he could bear lying to Naruto after everything he’d put him through. Memories were nudging at his consciousness, reminding him how he’d behaved in that awful day between learning of Kakashi’s death and going down to the morgue. His pressed a fist against his lips, trapping the soft flesh painfully between knuckles and teeth.

“I don’t understand,” Naruto said, and a sob caught in his throat.

“I’m not dead,” Kakashi said. “And Iruka’s fine. That’s all that matters.” His eyes were trained on Naruto, but something about his tone made Iruka wonder which one of them he was trying to convince.

Finally, Naruto turned back to Iruka, closer to tears than Iruka ever wanted to see him. Iruka tried one last time to reach for him, and this time Naruto let himself be pulled forwards into a trembling embrace.

“I’m sorry,” Iruka whispered into his hair. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  


* * *

  


Ten minutes after Aina had left, Miho came up the graveyard path and spotted them amongst the trees.

“I hate shrines,” she grumbled. “Could you two have taken any longer? My knees hurt from pretending to pray.”

“The woman who came back from the dead doesn’t believe in the gods?” Kawaguchi asked, amused. “I’m surprised you didn’t come back loaded with charms.”

“It wasn’t a god who brought me back,” Miho said darkly. “Now shut up and report already.”

“It was Go Aina,” Tenzou said. “She said her family’s been acting strangely ever since that kunoichi came to town.”

“More specifically, since she _left_ town,” Kawaguchi corrected. “And Aina shared a lovely family legend about her grandfather apparently raising his wife from the dead.”

“So we were right,” Miho said. “This is all centred on the Go family. And since Jun is the only one who can mould chakra, he must be the killer.”

“Maybe,” Tenzou allowed. “But I want to find out more about this kunoichi, Hiwatari-san. I think maybe she was looking for the book.”

“What book?” Miho asked.

Of course, she’d been missing when they’d found the book and since she’d returned, he and Kawaguchi had only discussed it alone.

“The day after you were killed, we found a book containing the seals painted on the bodies,” Kawaguchi said.

“So where is it now?”

“We took it back to Konoha and the Hokage gave it to a seals expert.”

“Who?”

“It was Umino Iruka,” Tenzou said.

“Oh, Kakashi’s boyfriend?” Miho frowned. “I thought he was a teacher.”

“He is. But he’s also one of the best seals researchers in Konoha, apparently. I was surprised too when Kakashi first mentioned it to me.”

Something niggled at the back of his mind. Something that someone had said when Sandaime had given Iruka the book. He felt like he’d heard it again, more recently, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what it was.

“Has he figured anything out yet?” Miho asked.

“Sandaime-sama would have contacted us if Iruka-san had made any progress, but communications will take at least two days, probably three.”

“Let me know if you hear anything. I don’t like being kept out of the loop.”

“Sorry. I’d forgotten you didn’t know.”

“So when are we going to move in on Jun?” Kawaguchi asked.

“As soon as he gets home from work today,” Tenzou said. “But neither of us is to mention that we spoke to Aina-san. I don’t want to put her in danger.”

“Don’t stop until you get answers,” Miho instructed. “If we play our cards right, we can solve this case today.”

  


* * *

  


It was shortly before five o’clock that Tenzou rapped on the door of the Go house. Kawaguchi had suggested they arrive before Jun and spend some time alone with his family. Miho was watching the shop and was going to trail Jun home when he left, just in case; they couldn’t afford to let him out of their sight when they were so close to some answers.

Jun’s wife, Fuyu, opened the door. She faltered at the sight of two ANBU standing outside her house.

“Can we come in?” Tenzou asked.

“My husband isn’t home yet.”

“That’s all right,” Kawaguchi said. “We’ll wait.”

Fuyu dithered, but then stood aside and gestured weakly for them to enter. Tenzou didn’t miss the nervous glance she directed inside.

The house, like all houses in Shukunegi, was small. There were two rooms on the ground floor, and a narrow flight of stairs leading to what Tenzou thought would be two bedrooms. The buildings here had outhouses rather than internal bathrooms, including, to Tenzou’s constant horror, the inn where they were staying. The sewerage system hadn’t made it this far. Through the kitchen doorway, Tenzou glimpsed the bath, a wooden tub stored neatly at the side of the room.

Yua was sitting in the living room with a book, and she glanced up as they entered, surprised but much less wary than her mother had been.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Tenzou said.

Yua smiled and gestured to the couch. “Please, make yourselves at home.”

The couch was covered by a throw, and it sank more than was comfortable when Tenzou sat down. Kawaguchi remained standing, crossing the small room to look out of the window. Tenzou thought he might be checking to see whether their surveillance vantage point was as invisible from the house as they’d thought, but he couldn’t tell from Kawaguchi’s body language whether that was the case.

Fuyu hovered in the doorway.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked. “Something to eat?”

Yua sighed. “Matka, they can’t. Unless you’re asking them to take off their masks.”

Fuyu coloured. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t think.”

Tenzou waved her apology aside. “It’s not a problem. Thank you for the offer, but we’d like to talk to you both, if you don’t mind.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for my husband to get home?”

“He can join us later. Please, sit down.”

Besides the couch, there was an armchair and a rocking chair. Yua was rocking gently by the fireplace, her book now closed and resting in her lap, and Fuyu glanced at her before perching on the edge of the armchair. Kawaguchi was still standing by the window, but facing the room, leaning casually against the wall.

“Did Jun-san kill those villagers?” Kawaguchi asked.

Tenzou watched the reactions. Fuyu was full of visible distress, but Yua didn’t react at all, to the point where her impassive expression was interesting in itself. Her poker face was far beyond what Tenzou would expect from a seventeen-year-old girl who’d lived most of her life in a sleepy fishing village.

“Of course not,” Fuyu insisted. “We told you last time, he had nothing to do with those deaths.”

“Then how was he involved? Don’t say he wasn’t – lying to ANBU is a criminal offense, you know.”

“What makes you think he was involved?” Yua asked.

“Everything,” Kawaguchi said. “You seem like a smart girl, don’t play dumb.”

Yua raised her chin. “He wasn’t involved in their deaths. We’ve told you that again and again. We can’t change the truth because you want us to.”

Tenzou shifted his gaze to Fuyu. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap and she was staring down at them, but when he looked at her she glanced up, the movement of her head small and sharp, and locked her wide eyes on his. They screamed at him.

“Tell us about Hiwatari-san,” Kawaguchi said.

Fuyu’s eyes burned a hole straight through Tenzou’s mask.

“I will,” Yua said, setting her book aside and rising from the chair. “But Papa’s home. I’ll go and greet him, and I have to call in my pet.”

Kawaguchi glanced out of the window. “Bring him through here. If your pet isn’t nearby, don’t go looking for it. Stay in the house.”

“Of course.”

She swept out of the room without looking at her mother, who ducked her head as Yua passed by. Tenzou heard the front door open and Yua informing her father that there were ANBU in the house. He turned to Fuyu and spoke quickly and lowly.

“Are you in danger? If you need help, talk to us.”

Fuyu made a choked sound and shook her head.

“My daughter,” she whispered. “Please help my daughter.”

There were footsteps in the hall, and Jun stepped into the room. His face was pale, and he moved to stand next to his wife. Tenzou could hear Yua calling _come inside_ from the front door.

Tenzou wanted to ask more, but he wasn’t sure whether Fuyu wanted her husband to know what she’d asked them. He held his tongue and battled back his impatience. Kawaguchi had turned his back on the window when Fuyu had spoken, but then the front door closed and he glanced back outside to make sure Yua hadn’t left.

Two pairs of footsteps came down the hallway, and Tenzou rose to his feet. It didn’t sound like a dog or a cat.

Yua came back into the room and smiled brightly at him. The second person paused in the hallway, and then came inside. It was Miho.

“What are you doing here?” Tenzou demanded.

“Now, now, that’s no way to speak to your captain,” Yua said. She settled herself back in the rocking chair, relaxed and still smiling. “Don’t you think this is nice – all of us here together? It’s about time you came to visit, Tenzou. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Tenzou saw Kawaguchi reach for a weapon, but didn’t do the same. The girl was sitting on a chair made of wood; all he needed was his hands.

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Yua said. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know about Hiwatari Asuka. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? But first, Miho, be a dear and tell me what I sent you to find out.”

Tenzou whipped his head around. Miho looked bewildered but she answered the question.

“The book is in Konoha, but no one knows what it means. They gave it to Umino Iruka.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has the name Hiwatari Asuka been mentioned before...?
> 
> I just want to take a moment to rec another KakaIru zombie fic because it is one of my all-time favourite KakaIru stories and I think you guys would enjoy it. It's [The Empty City](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2263500/chapters/4970976) by MyThoughtBubbles, and it's a more traditional post-apocalyptic zombie story, based on a survival horror game, and features ex army Kakashi and bamf Iruka fighting the infected and trying to last another day. The romance is very slow burn but intensely satisfying (and builds up to one of my favourite K/I sex scenes, which I frequently re-read *shot*). If you haven't already read it, I strongly encourage you to give it a go.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the extra long wait for this chapter. I was worrying about some pacing/structure issues so decided to write Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 and then edit them together, so although there's been a long silence, I'll be posting Chapter 7 within the next week. It needs a little more editing than this one and I'm probably going to send a couple of scenes back to my beta for a second read-through, but hopefully I'll be posting it in the next few days.

“Iruka-kun has the book?” Yua said. She laughed. “The world is so _neat_ sometimes, isn’t it?”

“What the fuck is going on here?” Tenzou demanded.

The whole situation had spiralled out of his understanding. Go Yua was somehow at the root of this, even though she was a civilian. Miho had betrayed them, but she was standing in the doorway with her hands clamped over her mouth as though she was as shocked as Tenzou. The only thing that made sense was the name Hiwatari Asuka. Tenzou knew that name – Asuka was a genius seals master who had lived in Konoha until six years ago.

“Oh, come on,” Yua said. She was leaning back comfortably in the chair, unconcerned that three very tense ANBU were focused on her. “It isn’t so hard to figure out. There’s no great mystery, no plot twist. I suppose you’re missing some of the crucial details, but if you figure out the first piece I’ll help you fill in the blanks.” She tilted her gaze to Kawaguchi. “You can’t be completely clueless. Miho tells me you’re good at this sort of thing.”

“Answer one question,” Kawaguchi said. “Are you the one who brought Miho back?”

“I’ll give you a clue.” Yua stopped suppressing her chakra. She was shinobi. More than that, Tenzou recognised the signature – it felt the same as Miho’s newly acquired chakra signature.

“You made the seals,” Kawaguchi said, gaze flicking between the two women.

“Wait a minute,” Tenzou said. He looked over at Jun, who was standing next to his wife. They were both very tense, expressions drawn and fearful. “You told us your daughters were both chakra-dead. Did you lie to us?”

“No,” Kawaguchi said. His voice had taken on the distracted tone that Tenzou knew meant his brain was whirring furiously. “Go Yua is dead.”

Fuyu cried out and rose from the armchair. “No, you’re wrong. She’s not dead, she was _taken_.”

Yua cut a smile at Kawaguchi. “Of course she isn’t dead,” she said soothingly. “How like ANBU to jump straight to the worst case scenario. You two.” She turned to Jun and Fuyu. “You’re cluttering up the room. Go wait upstairs.”

Tenzou almost told them to stay, but stopped himself. He didn’t know what was happening, and while there was any possibility of danger, he couldn’t let them be caught in the middle of it. He caught Jun’s eye and nodded, and Jun ushered his wife hurriedly from the room.

As the tramp of their footsteps carried up the stairs, Kawaguchi said, “Why don’t you drop the henge?”

And something clicked in Tenzou’s mind. Aina had said that her family had changed after Asuka had left town. Seal masters were good at high level henges.

“You’re Hiwatari Asuka,” he said.

Asuka looked delighted at the revelation. “Bingo! But I’d prefer to keep the henge. It’s quite nice being a pretty young thing again.”

“You kidnapped Jun’s daughter so he’d help you with the seals,” Kawaguchi said. “And you took her place so that you could stay in town without anyone realising.”

Miho stepped forwards and finally let her hands drop from their grip over her mouth.

“You killed me.”

Asuka sighed impatiently. “Yes, yes, we’ve already had this conversation. Don’t start that again.”

There was something off about how easily Miho dropped the subject, but Tenzou couldn’t focus on it. Sitting in front of him was the person who’d drawn the knife over Miho’s throat and she was _smiling_.

Kawaguchi moved first, knife drawn, a quick movement that brought him into striking range before Miho grabbed his arms and dragged him back. Asuka watched the thwarted attack with something like amusement, and Tenzou seized her moment of distraction to cast a jutsu. Branches snapped out of the rocking chair and whipped around her, pinning her in place.

“Ow, Miho, what the fuck?” Kawaguchi snapped. She’d twisted his arms behind his back and was holding him still with little apparent effort, despite Kawaguchi’s struggles. “Let go!”

Miho was staring down at him with the same perplexed expression she’d worn when she’d told Asuka who had the book.

“I can’t,” she said slowly, as though puzzling out the solution to a problem. “If I let you go, you’ll try and hurt her again, and I can’t let you do that.”

“Such an obedient pet,” Asuka said. “Don’t blame Miho, she can’t help it. It’s written in the seals.”

Tenzou looked between them. Kawaguchi had stopped struggling and Asuka wasn’t attempting to break free of her bonds. If Miho was being controlled by the enemy, each side currently had a captive.

“How?” Kawaguchi asked, voice tight with pain. “How are you controlling her?”

Asuka shrugged. “She does what I tell her. It’s not that difficult to grasp.”

“But you didn’t say anything!”

“If you’re told to protect your target on a mission, do you stop bothering after the first attempt on his life? I gave her some very specific instructions before I told her to forget everything. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that she still obeys even though she’s forgotten the commands.” The last sentence was murmured, Asuka’s sharp eyes fixed on Miho like she was a specimen in a lab. It made Tenzou’s skin crawl.

Still, the solution was obvious. They didn’t know what Asuka had already instructed Miho to do, but Tenzou could stop her from issuing any more commands. He raised his hands, ready to use another wood jutsu to gag her.

“If Tenzou tries anything, kill Kawaguchi,” Asuka said.

Tenzou froze.

“I wouldn’t,” Miho said, eyes wide and horrified.

“Of course you would. Let me prove it.”

“No,” Tenzou said loudly, but he couldn’t move, could only stand and watch.

“Break one of his bones,” Asuka instructed. “I don’t care which one. Dealer’s choice.

Miho wrenched up one of Kawaguchi’s arms, pulling him back against her chest. He tried to use the moment to free himself, but couldn’t break her grip. She held him by the wrist, an elbow digging into his chest to keep him pinned against her, and then grasped his little finger in her other hand and bent it back. The crack was audible.

“Fuck,” Kawaguchi gasped.

“I’m sorry,” Miho said. Her voice trembled. She stared at Kawaguchi’s finger, which was sticking back at an impossible angle.

“You see?” Asuka asked, and it took Tenzou a moment to tear his gaze away from his teammates and back to her. She was smiling at him, perfectly composed. “Now let me go or I’ll have her snap his neck.”

There was no choice. Tenzou made the signs and the branches retreated back into the smooth wood of the rocking chair. Asuka wriggled into a more comfortable position.

“Much better,” she purred. “Now that you all understand the situation, let’s get down to business. I have a proposition for you. You see, we actually have a common aim.”

“Yeah, I love being maimed,” Kawaguchi muttered. “How did you know?”

“You’ve probably heard my name before,” Asuka said. “I was the best seals master Konoha had until I left the village and started travelling. About two years ago I was in Water Country and heard the stories about the Go family, that a man had resurrected his wife and the seals he’d used to do it were written down in a book. Could anything be more fascinating? I tracked down the book and stole it, but discovered I couldn’t read it. I spent a lot of time doing what research I could and attempting to track down Go Kin’s son.”

“But Jun wouldn’t help you,” Tenzou said.

“No,” Asuka said shortly. “His father never taught him the code, but I knew he could be helpful. He had a knowledge of the specialist Mist seals that I didn’t. I tried asking nicely at first, but eventually he left me with no choice but to resort to more drastic measures. Yua is currently hidden away in the wilderness, and I’ll return her once I’ve successfully completed the experiment.”

Tenzou glanced at Miho. Wasn’t she a successful experiment? He couldn’t imagine what more Asuka could want.

“Bullshit,” Kawaguchi said. “Keeping someone alive out there is too much trouble, especially when you needed fresh corpses to practice your seals. She was your first kill, and then you hid the body so you could keep using Jun.”

“An interesting theory,” Asuka said mildly. “But, really, Yua’s fate is beside the point.”

“What happened to you?” Miho blurted out. “I had friends who respected you. People were _sad_ when you left Konoha.”

“It’s been six years. People change. But this is also beside the point.”

“What do you want?” Tenzou asked.

“I want Miho to be a functioning being in her own right,” Asuka said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s lovely having a pet ANBU captain, but my aim isn’t to create zombie slaves. I want to give her a functioning chakra system so that she can mould and restore her own chakra, and I want to free her from my influence.”

There was a silence.

“You want to cure me?” Miho asked. “Then why bother killing me in the first place? This is my _life_ you’re fucking about with!”

“It won’t cure you,” Asuka said flatly. “You won’t be alive. You’ll be _better_ than alive. Wounds won’t hurt you, you won’t age or get sick, you’ll be strong and fast and hardly anything will have the power to kill you. It’s an honour that you get to be the prototype.”

“Prototype,” Kawaguchi repeated, voice still strained, but Tenzou spoke over him.

“You’re asking us to help you?”

“I need that book back or I can’t start modifying the seals. All my notes are written inside it. I spent a while experimenting with Miho before you came back, but now I’m ready to reclaim what’s mine and get on with my work. I’m taking her and Jun to Konoha with me, but it'll be a problem if ANBU are hunting me down. Besides, I could use the help.”

“You want us to work for you,” Tenzou said numbly.

“Only until I complete the experiment and give Miho back her free will. After that I won’t need any of you anymore. Think about it,” she urged. “I have no plans to cause trouble for Konoha. All I want there is to take back the book. And if you stay close to me, you can keep an eye on me and make sure I stick to my word.”

Tenzou stared at her, conscious that Miho was still holding Kawaguchi and could kill him before Tenzou had taken a step. He was under no illusions that Asuka would let them go if he refused.

“No,” Miho said. “It doesn’t matter what she does to me, I’m already dead. Tenzou, you’d be a _traitor_. Do you understand what that means?”

“And because I know you ANBU are prone to violence,” Asuka added, “know that the seals link Miho to me completely. If I die, so does she. For real this time.”

It could be a bluff, but they both knew it wasn’t one Tenzou was willing to risk. His mouth felt dry. Asuka was asking them to commit treason, but if he refused, his team would be destroyed. 

“Tenzou,” Kawaguchi said quietly, “I’ll follow whatever choice you make.” 

“You can’t,” Miho insisted. “This goes against everything ANBU stands for!”

For some reason, Tenzou thought of Kakashi, of quiet talks they’d had, and of the story of Team Minato that had slipped out through the cracks.

“Make a choice,” Asuka said. “Help Miho or abandon her to me.”

Tenzou reached up and took off his mask.

“What do you want us to do?”

  

* * *

 

Kakashi stood on the walkway around the outside of Iruka’s apartment building and leaned against the railing, his back to the street. He’d slipped out while Iruka had been talking to Naruto, certainly not unnoticed but not called back either. Maybe it was cowardly, leaving Iruka to explain, but Kakashi wasn’t good at comforting crying children at the best of times, never mind now.

Secretly, he was grateful for the distraction. It gave him more time to think. He’d been planning on discussing the whole situation with Iruka as soon as they were alone, but even when he’d told Iruka they needed to talk, he hadn’t known what he wanted to say.

The problem was his eye. Iruka hadn’t realised, that was clear enough, but ever since Kakashi had remembered that command – _let them cut it out_ – it had been rattling around the edges of his mind. As much as he wanted to ignore it, he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t know. The words were a constant echo, overlaid with the memory of the pull and slice of the surgery, which came back to him when he least expected it. As he thought of it now, he became conscious of the eyepatch, and had to curl his fingers around the metal railings to stop himself from touching it.

What should he do? He wanted to tell Iruka, to let the fact lie out in the open so that he could see it from another less awful angle, but at the same time he balked at the thought. He could imagine the look on Iruka’s face. There was no way to phrase it without the words coming out as an accusation. If he was honest with himself, part of him wanted the confrontation, the blame-laying – he would gain some spiteful satisfaction in seeing Iruka crushed with guilt. Knowing that that part of him existed was enough to clamp his jaw shut, and he wasn’t sure if he repressed it to protect Iruka or to protect himself from fully grasping what a vile human being he must be.

Down on the street, there was a shout followed by loud laughter. Kakashi didn’t turn to look. He was sure Sandaime wouldn’t hesitate in informing his friends and colleagues that he was still alive, now that the decision had been made, but he couldn’t know how quickly the news would spread. If he turned to look down, or if one of Iruka’s neighbours left their home right now, would they know for sure he wasn’t a ghost?

Iruka’s front door opened softly, and Iruka stepped over the threshold. He hesitated in the doorway for a moment, and the sight of him made Kakashi feel absurdly guilty. All he wanted was to scoop Iruka into his arms and plant kisses on his face until they both felt better, but he couldn’t.

Iruka shut the door behind him and came over to stand beside Kakashi, leaving a distance between them like an open wound.

“How’s Naruto?”

“Upset,” Iruka said quietly. “Angry. I deserve it. What kind of person am I, to just forget about him? And the way I treated him after you -” He swallowed. “Before I brought you back was horrible. I didn’t even see it.”

“Grief can change the way you see everything. He’ll forgive you.”

Iruka leaned his arms on the railings, staring down at the street.

“I know he will." 

There was silence.

“I’m sorry.”

Kakashi turned around more fully, but Iruka wasn’t looking at him.

“What for?”

“For not healing you properly.”

And all of a sudden it struck Kakashi how ridiculous that was.

“You brought me back from the dead and you’re _apologising_?”

Iruka dug his nails into his arms and Kakashi couldn’t reach out and gently ease them away.

“I didn’t know enough about those seals. I didn’t do the right research, I made mistakes, I didn’t even understand what I was doing. And because of that you lost your eye and you’re not properly alive and you’re not _happy_.”

A light gust of wind blew a stray strand of Iruka’s hair into his face, where it stuck to his damp eyelashes. Moments ago, Kakashi had been trying to crush the urge to hurt Iruka. Now, he couldn’t even understand the concept.

“When I died,” Kakashi said quietly, “it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. More than anything, in that moment, I wanted to survive. I can’t begin to explain to you that fear of dying. It became everything I was. And then I opened my eyes and you were there.”

Iruka finally looked up at him, blinking hard.

“It’s not easy being like this. I won’t lie and tell you I’m all right with it. But I would rather be here like this with you than have died for nothing and left you behind.”

Iruka reached out very slowly and brushed the pad of his finger lightly against a fold in Kakashi’s t-shirt. Kakashi stood very still.

“I never thought I could love anyone this much,” Iruka whispered. A stray thread caressed his fingernail.

“Me neither."

 

* * *

  

Naruto stood in the centre of the lounge and crossed his arms furiously.

“You’re kicking me out?”

Iruka tried not to wince. Behind him, Kakashi was skulking in the doorway, trying not to get involved.

“I don’t want to send you home, but Kakashi’s still sick and I need to look after him.”

“I could help!”

“Naruto, I’m sorry.”

“You couldn’t even look after yourself when you thought he was dead. You didn’t eat or sleep or talk to me – you just worked on those stupid seals and then disappeared in the middle of the night!”

“Those seals saved Kakashi,” Iruka snapped, suddenly defensive.

Naruto paused his tirade and turned his damp, furious gaze on Kakashi.

“This is all your fault. You made Iruka-sensei sad and you weren’t even dead.”

“Naruto,” Kakashi started.

“Shut up! I don’t want to listen to you. I was really sad as well when I thought you were dead, but neither of you care how I feel.” He was sobbing angrily now. “I don’t want to stay here anyway. You’re probably just going to work on those seals again and not tell me what they do.”

Iruka didn’t deny it, and Kakashi didn’t say anything either. Naruto looked between them and then stormed out of the room. There were bangs as he violently gathered his things in his room.

After a moment, Kakashi followed him. Iruka heard his quiet voice and then Naruto’s broken sobbing. He sat down on the couch and stared at the floor, waiting. The murmured conversation continued in Naruto’s room for a few more minutes, mostly one-sided, and then the door opened and Iruka looked up. Naruto hurried past the doorway without looking in and then came the sound of him stamping into his shoes and the front door slamming. His footsteps pounded away.

Kakashi slipped back around the doorframe.

“He’s angry because he loves you. Give it time.”

Iruka took a breath and rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s fine. If I could tell him the truth, he’d understand why I need to prioritise you right now. When this is all over, I’ll fix things. It’ll all be fine.”

He looked up at a movement from the window, and then a knuckle rapped on the glass. Bear was perched on the wall outside. Iruka got up and opened the window.

“Special delivery,” Bear sang as she thrust the book and a file into Iruka’s hands. “All your notes are in there.”

“Thanks.”

Bear leaned her arms on the windowsill. “Sandaime-sama’s made the official announcement that Kakashi-san is still alive. We haven’t mentioned that he’s staying with you, but I imagine that won’t stop your friends from figuring it out. Be prepared for visitors as soon as they realise he’s not in the hospital.”

More interruptions, Iruka thought with a spike of displeasure. When would they _end_?

“If you need an ANBU for anything, signal from outside your front door. There’ll be someone watching.”

The tone of voice was neutral, leaving Iruka to interpret whether Bear intended her statement as a comfort or a threat.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

Bear moved back out of the window. “See you later, sensei.” She let herself fall back and then disappeared in a swirl of leaves.

“I think she likes you,” Kakashi said.

Iruka snorted, but his focus was now on the book and file in his hands. He strode over to the coffee table and placed them down, rifling through the file first to ensure all his notes were there. His hand stilled.

“What’s wrong?”

Some of the notes were splashed with Iruka’s blood. The paper was stained brown and crinkled. Kakashi tried to peer over his shoulder, and Iruka shoved the papers back in the file.

“It’s nothing. Don’t look.”

Kakashi turned away, but his shoulders tensed.

“Don’t do that.” His voice was suddenly cold and tight.

“Don’t do what?”

“Give me orders.”

He was still looking away, and Iruka realised what he’d said.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Kakashi. I wasn’t paying attention.” Kakashi still didn’t turn, and Iruka realised that he _couldn’t_. “You can look.”

Kakashi turned back. He was still wearing his mask and Iruka wished he’d take it off.

“It’s OK.” It wasn’t OK. Iruka knew that tone of voice. “But you need to pay attention to what you’re saying. I know you don’t mean to, but you work in a school. You’re used to giving orders and they come too naturally. That’s dangerous now.”

“Dangerous? I understand why you find it upsetting, but it’s not like I’d ever tell you to do something you really didn’t want.”

Kakashi looked over towards the kitchen and was silent for a moment. Iruka restrained himself from grabbing the mask and tugging it down.

“You wouldn’t intentionally,” Kakashi said. “But I don’t think the seals are programmed to understand sarcasm or irony or figures of speech.”

It took a moment for Iruka to digest that. _Break a leg_. _Shoot the messenger_. _Cut it out_. Something itched at the back of his mind, but then Kakashi spoke again and his train of thought disintegrated.

“Pay attention to how you phrase things and we should be fine.”

“I will,” Iruka said. “I promise. And you know I’ll never do it on purpose, right?”

“I know.”

Kakashi sat down on the sofa, at the far end from where Iruka was sitting on the floor.

“I think there are rules to it.”

“Rules?”

“Yesterday you told me not to touch you,” Kakashi said. Iruka remembered the moment, when Kakashi had touched him in his sleep and the seals had started draining his chakra. “I think it’s still affecting me.”

“How can you tell?”

Kakashi tapped a finger against his jaw as he thought. “When you tell me to do things, it’s not like my body moves against my will. Your orders become what I _want_ to do, so strongly that I can’t possibly fight it. But I’ve noticed that with some things, it only lasts for a moment, like when you told me to take off the eyepatch, and then it’s like the spell is broken and I’m free again.”

“But you still feel like that about touching me?”

Kakashi nodded. “I think it’s to do with whether the order is an ongoing or complete action. Saying ‘don’t touch me’ doesn’t have a time limit, so it’ll keep affecting me until you say otherwise. But if you tell me to sit down, I can complete the action, so once I’m sitting then I’m free to stand up again if I want to.”

Iruka considered that and gnawed at the inside of his cheek. It seemed even more dangerous now that he knew commands could stay active, hidden under the surface, to be forgotten about, or go unnoticed until a certain situation arose.

“Shit,” he said softly. “Do you want me to take it off you? The no touching rule.”

“No, not yet. That one’s probably for the best until you have enough chakra. Which reminds me. You said that the seals sucked out your chakra to fill my system and power my body, right?”

“Right. But you have more natural chakra than me so even if it had fully drained me, it wouldn’t have been enough to make you feel normal.”

“Does that mean that once I’ve taken enough chakra from you to stop me being depleted, I’ll be able to use your chakra like it’s mine?”

Iruka hesitated. “I don’t know. If you do, your system won’t be able to restore itself. I’d have to constantly give you more of my chakra.”

This time, Iruka didn’t need to see beneath the mask to know that Kakashi looked extremely displeased.

“Right,” he muttered. “That’s what I thought.”

It must be awful, Iruka considered guiltily. To have no usable chakra, no bodily functions – not even true free will.

“I’ll fix it,” he said. “I’ll fix everything. I just need to study for a while and then I’ll mend the seals and everything will be all right again.”

Kakashi looked at him. “I hope so.”

“I’ll start now.”

Iruka stood up and collected a pen and a notebook, then curled his legs under him on the floor again.

“First I want to make a list of all the symptoms so I know what I need to fix.”

He started scribbling bullet points, speaking aloud so that Kakashi could chime in to correct or add to anything. _No need to eat or sleep_. _Organs not functioning_. _Chakra system not functioning independently_. _Must obey commands_. _No sensitivity to pain or temperature_. _Increased strength_.

“Why am I stronger?” Kakashi asked. “It’s not like my muscles have changed. If anything, shouldn’t I be weaker because there’s no longer any oxygen flowing to them in my bloodstream?”

“They don’t need oxygen anymore,” Iruka said. “My best guess is that you no longer have any biological limitations. The human body tries to stop you from overusing your muscles through pain and exhaustion, but you don’t feel either of those so you can use your strength to its full capacity. And as a high level shinobi you’re pretty strong to begin with. Though I wouldn’t recommend getting carried away – if you put too much stress on your muscles, they’ll still get damaged.”

“I imagine my body won’t heal by itself either,” Kakashi said.

“Probably not. Let’s not test it.”

“One more thing,” Kakashi added. “I can’t sense anyone’s chakra except yours. But I can feel yours over longer distances than usual, and even when it’s severely depleted.”

“Interesting,” Iruka muttered. “It kind of makes sense. You use chakra to sense chakra, which is why you can’t sense most people, but the seals are attuned to my signature. That one might go away when your system’s full. It could just be the seals trying to make you take the chakra you need.”

“I hope it doesn’t go away.” Iruka looked at him, and Kakashi passed a hand sheepishly through his hair. “I like knowing where you are.”

Iruka smiled and repressed the urge to kiss him. Instead, he stared down at the list he’d made. It was longer than he’d have liked, and there was no guarantee it was complete, but it was a starting point. If he knew what he was looking for, he was better placed to find it than he’d been when he was working blind.

“It’s getting late,” Kakashi said. “Shouldn’t you eat something?”

“But I haven’t done anything yet! I’ll eat when I’ve done some real work.”

He started pulling his notes back out of the file, trying to keep the bloodstained ones hidden beneath others. Kakashi stood up.

“You’re chakra depleted, you have to eat or you’ll pass out. I’ll cook you something.”

“You don’t have to.”

Kakashi ignored him and went through into the kitchen half of the room and started opening cupboards.

"I’m sure you used to complain that your seals teacher didn’t always bother to sleep and eat. Guess you picked up that bad habit after all.”

Iruka looked up. “What are you talking about? I didn’t even know you when I was Asuka-sensei’s student.”

“Sure you did.” Kakashi glanced back and tapped his arm where his sleeve was covering his ANBU tattoo.

“Oh!” Iruka had been familiar with most of the active ANBU during his younger teenage years, and never for the right reasons. One in particular had taken an interest in him after an incident that still filled Iruka with equal parts pride and embarrassment. “You were Hound?”

“Pretty sure I can’t confirm or deny that.”

“ _You’re_ the one I caught in my ANBU trap?”

Kakashi seemed to finally realise he was wearing his mask and tugged it down. He was trying to look put out, but a smile was creeping through.

“Let’s not get carried away – if Hound hadn’t been chakra drained and injured, you’d never have got one over on him. He was way too cool to be caught out by a thirteen-year-old brat who tried to catch ANBU for fun.”

Iruka sat back against the couch, dazed. “It was you. That ANBU who used to follow me around everywhere after Sandaime-sama sent me to study with Asuka-sensei.” He put the pen down. “We’ve known each other for _ten years_?”

“What can I say, it was love at first trip-wire.”

Kakashi closed the fridge and put a hand on his hip.

“Returning to the present for a moment, your kitchen is empty, Iruka. God knows what Naruto was surviving off.”

Iruka surfaced from memories of Hound that he was now going to have to furiously re-evaluate, and glanced at the clock. “It’s too late to go shopping now. Don’t worry about it, I’ll just snack.”

“I have a better idea.” Kakashi grinned at him. “Bet you a thousand yen that if you flutter your eyelashes, Bear will treat you to takeout.”

  

* * *

 

Tenzou gently held Kawaguchi’s hand and wound the bandage around his fingers, splinting the broken one by binding it to the ring finger. They were back in the room at the inn, and Miho sat on the opposite bed, hunched over as if trying to make herself as small as possible.

“How’s that?” Tenzou asked. “Is it too tight?”

Kawaguchi took his hand back and examined it. “No, that’s fine.” He looked at Miho. “Did you realise you had some kind of super strength now?”

Miho had been quiet since they’d got back to the inn, but now she raised her head. “What are you talking about? I’ve always been stronger than you.”

“No, look.” Kawaguchi picked up his discarded arm guard and held it out so she and Tenzou could see.

The metal was dented where Miho had grabbed Kawaguchi’s arm. Tenzou had seen dented armour before – from weapons or chakra-powered high speed attacks. Never in the shapes of squeezing fingers.

“My wrists are already bruising,” Kawaguchi added. “It felt like I was caught in a vice.”

“I’m sorry,” Miho said in a small voice. “I didn’t know.”

“I guess it balances out the fact that you can’t use chakra,” Kawaguchi mused. “At least now we know to look out for your taijutsu.” Miho wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “Hey, I’m just being practical. Stop looking like you kicked a puppy. It’s freaking me out.”

“I shouldn’t even be in here with you,” Miho said. “I’m compromised. More than compromised, I’m the enemy.”

“No, you’re a victim,” Tenzou corrected firmly. “Actually, you did very well. It’ll only take six weeks tops for Kawaguchi to heal and there’s not much room for complications – if you’d broken an arm or a leg we’d be in big trouble.”

“But it’s his _hand_ ,” Miho said with all the horror shinobi reserved for hand injuries.

“Then I guess that’s the silver lining of working for the enemy,” Kawaguchi drawled. “I probably won’t need to fight for a while. Oh, come on, Miho, stop it. It doesn’t even hurt that much anymore.”

Tenzou had also administered a painkiller jutsu, although he wasn’t sure how strong it really was. If Kawaguchi was in pain, though, he was hiding it well.

Kawaguchi crossed to the other bed and sat down next to Miho. She tried to lean away but Kawaguchi put his good arm around her shoulders and pulled her close against his side.

“Stop worrying about us. Let us take care of you for once, Captain.”

“I’m not worth this,” Miho said. “Don’t you understand what you’re doing? There aren’t any extenuating circumstances for betraying the village. You’ll be locked away for the rest of your lives. Depending on how bad this gets, maybe even executed.”

“Only if someone finds out,” Tenzou said softly.

Miho stared at him. “You’ve lost your mind! How could anyone _not_ find out? We’re heading back to Konoha tomorrow morning – in three days, we’ll be surrounded by people who know we’re not supposed to be there. Even if you don’t get caught, ANBU will figure it out. Best case scenario, you live the rest of your lives as missing nin.”

“I know all of that,” Tenzou said. And he did. It was all he’d thought about since Asuka had told them to prepare for the journey and get some sleep. “And I don’t intend to let us do anything that will compromise Konoha or anyone’s life. If she orders us to kill Iruka-sensei and take the book, I won’t do it, and I won’t let you do it if she tries to make you. The way I see it, if we stick close to her we have a better chance of protecting not only you, but anyone else who gets involved.”

Miho relaxed a little. “I suppose that makes sense, but you can’t let her have the book. If you kill or arrest her before then, you won’t be punished.”

Tenzou and Kawaguchi exchanged a glance.

“We have to give it to her,” Kawaguchi said. “To save you. And don’t say you’re not worth it. You know how I see the village? It’s not the political framework or the clans or the bureaucracy – it’s the people who live there. So to me it makes no sense to sacrifice an individual for this mythical _idea_ of Konoha, because Konoha _is_ its individuals. Sacrificing you isn’t going to save lives. All it’ll do is ensure Konoha keeps a fucking book in its possession. You’re worth so much more than power and political sway – you do know that, right?”

“But the two of _you_ will still pay for it!”

“We can make our own decisions,” Tenzou said. “We have our priorities, and stopping Asuka is one of them – and we _will_ stop her from whatever she has planned – but saving you is more important.”

Miho collapsed into Kawaguchi’s side and closed her eyes. “What did I do to deserve a team like this?”

“You made us this way,” Tenzou said. He smiled. “Good job, Captain.”

 

 

Later, when Miho had returned to her room, Tenzou looked up from where he was packing his clothes and asked, “How certain are you that Go Yua is dead?”

“Almost completely,” Kawaguchi said. “It doesn’t make any sense to keep her alive, it’s too much hassle. And it isn’t like Asuka needs a living hostage anyway. Killing Yua just proves how serious she is about her threats – if Jun found out, well, he has another daughter and a wife. Asuka has nothing to lose by killing Yua, and a lot to gain for not having to care for a prisoner.”

“Do you think Aina-san is in danger because she spoke to us?”

“Probably no more than she already was. Asuka said she’d been waiting for us – she wanted us focused on the Go family. She was playing a game with us to give Miho time to find out about the book.”

Tenzou leaned against the wardrobe and frowned. “What I don’t understand is if Asuka had ordered Miho to find out where the book was, why didn’t Miho ever ask us about it?”

Kawaguchi was lying on his bed, idly watching Tenzou, his good hand pillowed beneath his head. “She couldn’t ask about something she wasn’t supposed to know about. Asuka must have figured we’d mention it and told her to ask questions when the subject came up. That way it’s much more natural.”

“I have a theory,” Tenzou said slowly.

“Yeah? About what?”

“I think maybe Miho’s the one who stole the book and left it for us.” Kawaguchi propped himself up on an elbow, interested. “Jun-san had too much to risk, but Miho had nothing to lose. And she’d have come into contact with it when Asuka brought her back. But if Asuka set up some base commands she had to obey, she probably forbid Miho from coming back into town or trying to contact us.”

“So she’d have to leave it somewhere else she knew it would be found,” Kawaguchi said. “Yeah, that sounds like something she'd do.”

Tenzou abandoned the packing and perched on the edge of Kawaguchi’s bed.

“What really bothers me is that Miho’s right,” he said. “She’s a threat to us now, and we have to remember that. Asuka could have set up any sort of trigger. If we say or do the wrong thing, Miho might attack us.”

“I don’t think Miho will complain if we don’t discuss everything in front of her. We shouldn’t anyway – Asuka will definitely make her give status reports on our conversations.”

Tenzou sighed. “So what are we going to do?”

“Play it by ear.” Tenzou gave him an incredulous look and Kawaguchi chuckled and bumped him with his knee. “Careful or your face will stick that way. There’s nothing else we can do, Tenzou. She’s got her own plans and she’s smart. Plus, she’s twice our age, even though she doesn’t look it right now – she’s got a hell of a lot more experience under her belt. Don’t drop your guard because she’s a chuunin. Hell, she could be tokujo level by now. Everything I know about her is six years out of date, and it was all second hand info in the first place." 

“So we wait until she has a knife at our throat, then come up with a plan,” Tenzou said dryly.

“No, we wait until just before.”

“And when will that be?”

He’d meant the question to be sarcastic but Kawaguchi answered him seriously.

“After we get the book and before she cures Miho. Before that point, we need to get some leverage because that’s when we stop being useful and become a threat.”

Tenzou didn’t need to ask what Asuka would do then.

“There’s one more problem with the time frame,” he said. “By now the Hokage will have got the message I sent and know what’s happened to Miho, but we won’t be around when his reply gets here. If he orders us to return or even to keep up constant communications, he’s going to realise very quickly that something’s happened.”

“How long can it take to steal a book from a teacher? That reminds me, Asuka spoke like she knew him. She called him Iruka-kun.”

Tenzou felt again the niggling suspicion he’d heard Asuka’s name mentioned recently outside Shukunegi.

“They’re both seals masters, so maybe…” It came back to him, a throwaway comment from before Miho’s funeral. “Oh! Asuka was Iruka’s teacher. I remember now, Sandaime-sama mentioned her when we gave Iruka the book.”

Kawaguchi hummed and tapped a finger against his jaw.

“Maybe that could work in our favour.”

“How?”

“I’m not sure yet. But let's keep it in mind in case it comes in useful later.”

Tenzou raised an eyebrow at him. “Aren’t you the one who always has some genius plan?”

“You’d be horrified if you knew how often I wing it and hope for the best.”

“Thanks, that really inspires me with confidence.” Tenzou sighed and stood up. “Come on, you need to pack too. We’re leaving early in the morning.”

Kawaguchi made a face but pushed himself into a sitting position.

“And I thought the journey to Konoha was boring before. Three days of playing I Spy with a sociopath is going to get old really quickly.”

Tenzou smiled grimly and checked the chest of drawers for anything he’d forgotten.

“Planning to weaken Asuka’s defences with mind-numbing travel games?”

“Don’t underestimate the power of passive-aggressive word games. I could probably break a man’s spirit after all these years I’ve spent practising on you.”

Three days. That’s how long it would take them to reach Konoha. Once they were inside the village walls, everything would really begin. They’d have to find a way to tip back the balance of power, and every move they made would have to be improvised. It should have made Tenzou nervous, but there was too much riding on this for him to consider failure.

“We’ll take her down in Konoha,” he said. “If there’s a way to save Miho and get out alive, we’ll find it there.”

Kawaguchi nodded and grinned.

“See you in three days, Konoha.”


	7. Chapter Seven

Iruka woke up late the next morning. It was one of the side effects of chakra depletion – the body craved extra food and sleep. A glance at the clock revealed that it was past eleven, and Iruka swore softly before climbing out of bed. He’d wasted the whole morning, but he couldn’t deny that he felt much better. His chakra was restoring nicely. In a few more days his system would be back to normal.

Once he’d washed and dressed, he tested his chakra levels by trying to sense where Kakashi was in the flat. The other chakra signature was faint, but he managed to pinpoint Kakashi’s presence in the lounge. Pleased, he wandered through and found Kakashi sitting on the couch with his legs stretched out, a pile of books in front of him that he must have devoured during the night. There was another of Iruka’s paperbacks held loosely in his hand, but he was watching the doorway before Iruka had even entered the room.

“What were you doing just now? I felt your chakra surge.”

“It’s fine, I was just seeing if I could feel where you were.”

Iruka moved into the kitchen and started reheating last night’s leftover takeaway.

“Could you?”

“Yeah, but not very well.” Iruka leaned against the counter beside the microwave. “It’s weird that you have my chakra. I mean, I’ve never really felt my own signature the way I do other people’s. It’s like looking at your own clone for the first time. Even though you’ve seen your own face in the mirror a thousand times, it’s not the same.”

“When I first started staying over at your place, I’d sometimes catch my reflection without the mask and jump out of my skin,” Kakashi admitted. Iruka laughed. “I’m serious. Before I stopped wearing it around you, I only took that thing off at home. I wasn’t used to the sight of my face anywhere else.”

The microwave dinged brightly and Iruka took his plate over to the breakfast bar, facing into the lounge.

“How do _you_ feel?” he asked. “You’re chakra depleted too, technically.”

“Maa, I’ve had it worse.”

“That didn’t answer the question.”

Kakashi lowered the book to his lap, his thumb caught between the pages to hold his place. “Honestly, it sucks. I’m not depleted all that much, but it’s not getting any better and I can’t do anything about it. It’s just this constant state of feeling tired and weak but not being able to sleep it off.”

“That sounds awful.”

Kakashi shrugged one shoulder. “It’s bearable, and when I’m distracted by something else I stop noticing it, but the nights are – unpleasant.” He looked down at the book.

Iruka lowered his chopsticks. “I’m sorry I slept for so long. You must have been so bored. I wouldn’t have minded if you’d woken me up, you know.”

“There’s no point in both of us suffering.” Kakashi slid down on the couch, bending his knees so he could lay his head on the armrest. “I think that’s why I thought it was hunger at first, when my body was craving your chakra. It’s sort of the same concept – I need energy and usually I’d get that from food or sleep but right now the only place I can get it is you.”

“In a day or two I can give you enough chakra to fill your system.”

“I’m looking forward to it. But!” Kakashi held up an admonishing finger. “Don’t overestimate yourself. Make sure you have enough to keep your own levels safe.”

Iruka ducked his head to hide his smile. “OK.”

Kakashi nodded seriously and relaxed back onto the couch. “You know the main reason why I’m looking forward to it?”

“Because you won’t feel tired?” Iruka said slowly.

“That’ll be great, but what’ll be even better is that we can touch.”

“Oh,” Iruka breathed. “Of course. Once your system’s full, your seals will stop trying to drain me.”

“I’m going to give you so many kisses,” Kakashi said. “I’ve been saving them up. Every time I’ve wanted to kiss you, I’ve added a mark to my mental tally.”

Iruka snorted. “No you haven’t!”

“Of course I have. This is no joking matter, Iruka.”

“What’s your tally up to then?”

“Twenty-seven,” Kakashi said without missing a beat.

Iruka pushed his empty plate away, trying not to laugh. “That’s a lot of kisses.”

“What, is that already too much for you? I didn’t think a mere twenty-seven would be more than you could handle.” Kakashi raised an eyebrow in challenge, and Iruka couldn’t help but grin.

“I couldn’t handle them all at once,” he said. “You’ll spoil me.”

“Twenty-eight,” Kakashi hummed. “I love spoiling you.”

Iruka stood up to go and cuddle up to him on the couch, but caught himself and instead picked up the plate and took it over to the sink.

“You better deliver now you’ve promised. I’ll be counting.”

Kakashi opened his book again, pillowing his head beneath one arm, his lips still curved up smugly.

“I wonder where I have to kiss you to make you lose count.”

Iruka shivered pleasantly. For the first time in a long while, he felt like he was home.

  


* * *

  


It was about two o’clock by the time the knock came at the door: three quick raps on the wood that caused Iruka to exchange a glance with Kakashi before getting up hurriedly to answer it.

Gai was standing outside. His eyes were puffy, as though he hadn’t slept well in a while, but his back was straight and his shoulders were set.

“You’re looking for Kakashi.”

“Is he here?”

Iruka nodded and stepped aside, gesturing for Gai to enter. Once over the threshold, Gai paused and started to toe off his sandals, but Iruka gave him a light push towards the lounge.

“Don’t mind that, just go.”

Gai nodded without looking at him and took steady steps down the hall. He disappeared through the doorway, and Iruka leaned against the wall, letting the muffled voices wash over him. He’d known Gai for years, but since he’d become involved with Kakashi he’d got a much closer look at their friendship. Once, Kakashi had bought an expensive brand of chocolates, opened the box and eaten the two with the cinnamon filling – Gai’s favourite – before passing them off to Gai with a shrug and some story about how they’d been a gift and he hadn’t liked them. The memory still made Iruka smile.

Before Gai’s arrival, Iruka had been working at the coffee table, but now he headed towards the bedroom to find some chore to keep him busy. As he passed the lounge, he glanced in. The two men were caught in a tight embrace, Kakashi still without his mask. Kakashi caught his eye over Gai’s shoulder and then Iruka turned and silently padded to the bedroom.

It was twenty minutes before Iruka heard Kakashi laugh in the other room, and he took this as his cue to re-enter. He found them sitting close together on the sofa and felt a small pang of jealousy before his gaze fell on the book and all of his notes still spread out on the coffee table.

“Iruka, please accept my deepest apologies for being rude when I got here,” Gai said.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you weren’t rude at all.”

Kakashi had followed Iruka’s line of sight to the coffee table and now he stood up.

“We’ll get out of your hair and let you work,” he said. “I’m going to head out for a bit.”

“Are you sure?” Iruka asked, at the same time Gai said, “You don’t have to.”

“I’m well enough to walk to the Tower,” Kakashi said. The words were for Gai, but he was looking at Iruka. “Nothing will happen.”

Kakashi’s chakra depletion wasn’t really bad enough to stop him from walking the short distance to the village centre and showing his face in the jounin lounge or the Mission Room, but there was always the danger of someone getting too close and noticing that Kakashi’s skin was a little too cold, or his breathing wasn’t constant. It wasn’t an observation that came naturally, and any intuition that something was wrong would likely be put down to Kakashi’s brush with death and continued bad health, but there was always a chance that someone would try to see beneath the underneath. Shinobi were observant like that.

“Be careful,” Iruka said.

There was a brief pause before Kakashi replied.

“I’m sure I will be.”

Iruka hung back in the hall while Kakashi pulled on a mask and a jacket, and then the front door closed behind them. Iruka went into the lounge and sat at Kakashi’s end of the sofa, expecting to feel his lingering body heat. The cushion was cold. He let his own body heat seep into it and then closed his eyes, pretending for a moment before moving down to the floor.

Iruka had been going back over the personalised seals he’d made for Kakashi and comparing them against both the guidelines in the book and what he’d actually drawn on Kakashi’s body. It was a slow process, and so far he’d found one mistake that he thought must have caused the seals to wrench the chakra from his body.

He couldn’t continue working on his copy of Kakashi’s seals until he’d checked every inch of them for mistakes, and he couldn’t do that without Kakashi present. Instead, he began compiling into a neat list the references to books and scrolls scattered throughout the many sheets of paper so that he could send an ANBU to fetch the research materials he’d need. The task turned out to be harder than he’d anticipated: most of the references he’d cited were bloodstained, illegible or so vague that he wasn’t sure if they were genius or absolute rubbish.

The cuts on his left arm itched. There were still stitches in the deepest two, one slashed dangerously close to his wrist and the other running lengthways down his arm from wrist to elbow. Iruka scratched them through his sleeve, then winced at a jolt of pain. A damp patch slowly soaked through the fabric. He ignored it.

It was easy to pretend that nothing had gone wrong when Kakashi was in the house with him, smiling at him as though he were happy. It was easy to pretend, when Kakashi was there, that they would be all right even if Iruka failed.

As he was completing the list, another knock came at the door. This one was quieter and somehow nervous, as though the visitor were hoping no one would answer. Iruka sighed, annoyed, but got up to answer it and wasn’t entirely surprised when he opened the door and found Outsuki standing outside.

“Outsuki-sensei, please come in.”

Outsuki toed off his shoes, glancing down the hallway after each one.

“Kakashi isn’t here,” Iruka said.

“That’s fine,” Outsuki said. It came out like a sigh of relief. “I came to talk to you. In fact, it might be better that Hatake-san isn’t here right now.”

“Really.”

“Well, the topic is a little delicate.”

That caught Iruka’s attention. He led the way through into the lounge and hastily gathered up his notes into a messy pile before gesturing for Outsuki to take a seat.

“I’ve been speaking to my colleague,” Outsuki said. “The one who performed Hatake-san’s surgery. She specialises in seals, so she’d probably be more useful to you if you needed to discuss your work, but since Hatake-san is primarily under my care at the moment, I’ve given a lot of thought to his condition.”

“You have?” Iruka suddenly felt guilty for not offering him tea.

“Of course. And it looks to me as though there’s another issue with curing Hatake-san, besides modifying the seals.”

“What issue?”

Outsuki paused. “It’s the matter of – well, I did some calculations and it’s certainly not as bad as it could be, but the problem still remains –”

“Please just tell me.”

The doctor hesitantly met his eye. “Since you revived him, Hatake-san’s body has been in a suspended state, but before then his body had already started to degrade.”

Iruka sat very still. If Kakashi’s cells had already started to break down, he would need to reverse that process – if such a thing were possible.

“The damage isn’t anywhere near as bad as it could have been,” Outsuki said. “Hatake-san was dead for approximately four days, but his body was placed inside a sealing scroll very soon after death. It was the kind intended to transport food, so the preservation seals slowed down the decay almost to a standstill. And when his body arrived back here, it was mostly stored in the mortuary cold room where the temperatures again have preservative effects –”

“How much?” Iruka asked. “How much damage was there?”

“I can’t say exactly without a tissue sample to examine, but I’ve tried to establish a timeline and my best estimate is that there’s maybe five hours’ worth of decay.”

Iruka had seen corpses in various states, but he was no expert on death.

“What does that mean?”

“The different cells in the body break down at different rates, but decomposition does start immediately. Essentially, the cells start attacking themselves and the internal organs start to putrefy, although Hatake-san’s body hasn’t reached that stage yet,” he added quickly. “But his cells have started breaking down, and if we can’t fix that, his organs won’t be able to function.”

Iruka almost laughed. “Every time I think there’s hope, something else comes up.”

“I think it’s possible,” Outsuki said. “Not for someone of my level, but I think I know who could do it. Do you know how chakra healing works, Umino-san?”

“Chakra is naturally involved in the healing process, I know that much. The more developed someone’s chakra pathways, the faster their natural rate of healing.”

“Yes, exactly. Chakra is basically another name for energy. Your body needs it to move or grow, and in most people that’s all it does – it’s something passive that can’t be controlled. But in people who can mould chakra, the system develops over time. By controlling it and using it in the shinobi arts, our bodies start to produce more energy and our conscious and subconscious control get better.”

“Subconscious control?”

“That’s where healing comes in, because it’s not something you can consciously improve, but faster healing is a side effect of improving your overall chakra control. For example, when you were first learning to use barrier seals, you could only create a barrier around yourself, but when you improved your control, you could be more specific and aim the barrier to protect others. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, but it’s the same idea. Usually, in civilians or genin, chakra targets a wounded area in general and spreads energy equally through the cells to help healing. But once your chakra control improves, chakra can be distributed more accurately, so the cells that need more energy get more, and the less damaged cells get less. It’s much more efficient and promotes faster healing.”

Iruka tugged at the end of his ponytail, trying to visualise what Outsuki had described.

“Healing jutsus work the same way,” Outsuki added. “But the effect is much stronger because all of the chakra is focused on healing. Whereas the injured person’s chakra is also being used for powering their muscles and organs. Chakra can’t be consciously focused unless it’s been moulded through a seal or jutsu.”

“So, basically, healing jutsus take a lot of chakra and concentrate it all on healing,” Iruka said slowly. “I get it. So you’re saying that if we had a medic who had both incredible chakra control and a large supply of chakra, they could manage to heal Kakashi at a cellular level and repair all the different stages of damage. But is that possible when the cells are already dead?”

“In theory. Obviously there’s never been a case quite like this, but I did hear about a successful treatment of early stage gangrene which was performed by the medic I have in mind. It’s the same principle – the flesh is dying, although in this case while still attached to living tissue. Usually there’s no cure for gangrene, and as far as I’m aware the process has never been repeated.”

It sounded too good to be true.

“Who’s the medic?”

“Senju Tsunade.”

Iruka made a sharp noise.

“Tsunade of the sannin? I thought she’d quit the shinobi life when she left Konoha.”

Outsuki nodded. “She did. But if we can convince her to come back, I really believe she could do it.”

“Do you even know where she is right now?”

“No, but I’m sure Sandaime-sama could track her down if he doesn’t already know. He was her cell captain, after all.”

Iruka shook his head in disbelief. Everything was too complicated. It was too _hard_. But he would try – he had to try. There was no other option.

“All right. Please let me know if you’re able to find her. If not, is there anyone else who could do it?”

“No one I can think of. It’s a rare combination, to have that much chakra and such accurate control.”

Iruka stared at his pile of notes. It looked pathetic; inadequate to the task at hand.

“This is going to take a long time.”

“Yes.”

Something about Outsuki’s tone made Iruka look up.

“Is there something else?”

The expression on Outsuki’s face told Iruka they’d reached the part of the conversation he didn’t want to broach. Iruka almost wished he hadn’t asked. How could it possibly get worse?

“It’s about Hatake-san’s eye,” Outsuki blurted out.

Iruka closed his eyes. “You can’t save it.”

There was a pause as Outsuki tried to work out how to say no. Iruka didn’t look at him.

“For whatever reason, the eye didn’t stop degrading when Hatake-san’s seals were activated. The decay is much more substantial. Over twelve hours.”

“Fuck,” Iruka breathed.

“We also can’t entirely stop the process now. We can slow it down with cold and preservation seals, but it’ll be irreversible within a few days, if it isn’t already.”

“A few days?” It was almost a shout. “Why did you tell Kakashi you could re-implant it? You must have known all along that it was never an option. The timeframe is – it’s nowhere near –” He stopped and swallowed hard.

“It was the only way to persuade him,” Outsuki said flatly. “He was in too much danger. We don’t know whether or not his flesh can become infected. If his eye had caused tissue damage in his brain, there would be no chance of reviving him.”

“So you lied.”

“I did what I had to do to ensure the best outcome for my patient. Lying isn’t always the worst option.”

Iruka turned on him, furious. “You don’t think he has the right to know?”

“He’ll react better after he’s lived without his eye for a few days. Even now, he’s adjusting psychologically. And for that reason, I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell him yet.”

Iruka stood up. “I won’t lie to him for you.”

Outsuki also stood, watching him warily. “Will you lie to him for his sake? This isn’t about his right to know – this is about his right to find out in a safe environment. It’s only been two days since he returned from the dead. Hasn’t he gone through enough trauma in the past forty-eight hours?”

That was true, but Iruka wasn’t convinced that spreading out the bad news was the answer.

“I don’t understand you,” he said. “You’re acting like you care how he feels, but every time you’re in the same room you shy away like he’s some kind of monster.”

Outsuki ran a nervous hand along his hairline.

“He makes me – uneasy,” he confessed. “But I’m trying to overcome that. He was placed in my care and I take that very seriously.”

“You have some strange ideas about how to care for him,” Iruka snapped.

Outsuki shifted to his other foot. “I understand why you’re upset, but this is a very complicated issue. Medical ethics are rarely black and white but this is especially delicate.”

“It looks black and white from where I’m standing! If I’d permanently lost an eye, I’d want someone to tell me. Otherwise how could I trust my doctors? If they’d hide something that important from me, I’d wonder what else they weren’t telling me.”

“What will you tell him if you can’t cure him?”

And just like that the fight was over.

“I mean, I don’t want to be negative,” Outsuki carried on, even more nervous now that Iruka had stopped shouting. “But if you realise that there’s no possible way, you’ll have to make the choice whether to tell him or whether to keep him hanging on. And you’ll have to decide what to do – is it ethical to let him carry on the way he is? What if he doesn’t want to live like that? Could you deactivate the seals if he asked you to?”

“Get out.”

It was barely more than a whisper, but Outsuki winced.

“It’s a worst case scenario, but you might have to think about this eventually.”

“Get out.”

Outsuki glanced around, as though hoping back-up would spring out of some hidden corner, but then he gave up and bowed clumsily before moving out into the hallway. Iruka heard him step into his shoes, and then there was a moment’s pause before the front door closed.

  


* * *

  


Kakashi crashed down on Gai’s sofa, exhausted, and Gai hovered over him anxiously.

“Can I get you some tea? Some food?”

“No thanks,” Kakashi said. “I’m fine, it’s just been a while since I’ve seen so many people at once.”

They’d visited the jounin lounge in the Tower, and Kakashi had spent a careful forty minutes acting frail enough that no one would touch him. The hug Gai had given him had been nerve wracking enough without a room full of less emotionally wrecked shinobi commenting on how cold he was. But it had been the right thing to do, to face them all at once. At the very least, Iruka shouldn’t have to put with too many more visitors now.

Gai sat gingerly beside him, as though any sudden movements would finish him off.

“I couldn’t help but notice,” he said, “that you’ve been very vague every time someone’s asked about your condition.”

Ah. In hindsight, Kakashi should have realised he couldn’t put Gai off for long when they were alone. But he hadn’t wanted to go straight back to Iruka’s, for reasons he was determined not to analyse.

“The Hokage asked me not to talk about it,” he said, which implied all sorts of things by itself without being an outright lie. He didn’t like lying to Gai.

Gai nodded. “Then I suppose I shouldn’t ask you about it.”

“I’d tell you if I could. Actually, it would be nice to talk about it with someone.”

“Surely Iruka knows?”

“Yeah,” Kakashi muttered. “Iruka knows.”

He didn’t know what had gone wrong. That morning he’d been so happy when Iruka had finally woken up and come to keep him company. Watching Iruka make breakfast and then sitting together in the living room had been a welcome slice of normality after the endless night. There’d been comfort in the routine, and if he’d ignored the bloodstained sheets of paper Iruka had been working from and the stillness in his own body, he could almost have convinced himself that everything since his mission had been a disturbing dream.

And then Iruka had said _be careful_ , without even realising, and the illusion had been broken. It wasn’t a bad thing to say – Kakashi couldn’t imagine how such a command could possibly hurt him – but it was the tip of a dangerous iceberg. It brought back fresh memories of the operating table. His hand curled defensively at the thought.

Gai was watching him.

“Is anything else bothering you? Something you can talk about?”

Kakashi smiled wryly behind the mask. Such a typical Gai question – vague enough to let him slip out of it, but open enough to show real concern. He was about to brush it off, but then paused.

“Yeah, sort of. I mean, I can sort of talk about it.”

Gai sat and waited for him to put the words in order.

“After I got back from my mission, Iruka did something. It wasn’t intrinsically a bad thing, and he still doesn’t know what the consequences were, but it hurt me.”

“Physically?”

“Yeah.” The skin beneath his eyepatch should have crawled at the thought – it should have itched and ached, but he felt nothing. “And I decided not to tell him about it because he’s already been through a lot, what with thinking I was dead and having to look after me now. But I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“I did notice,” Gai said slowly, “that when we left Iruka’s house you didn’t kiss him goodbye like you usually do.”

Kakashi had been hyper aware of it too, of Iruka’s expression when he’d taken a half step towards Kakashi and then faltered.

“So the problem is that Iruka doesn’t know,” Gai said when Kakashi didn’t respond, “and you want to tell him but you’re conflicted because you know he’ll feel guilty.”

“More than guilty,” Kakashi muttered. “And I’m scared that if I say it out loud I’ll get angry at him, and he doesn’t deserve that. It wasn’t his fault. It really wasn’t, and I know that, but I just.” He remembered the way he’d felt standing outside Iruka’s flat the day before, the feeling that hurting Iruka would bring him some closure. He hadn’t felt that way since – felt sick at himself at the thought – but the possibility scared him.

Gai rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

“If I’d hurt you without realising, I’d want to know. I’m sure Iruka feels the same way. And I think that the longer you keep it bottled up, the angrier you’ll feel.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Kakashi scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Hey, Gai. Have you ever…?” _Have you ever wanted to hurt someone you love?_ “Have you ever had to do something like this? Tell someone a harsh truth?”

“I’ve had to tell my students things they didn’t want to hear, but that doesn’t really compare.”

“Fuck, my team. I wonder what’s going to happen to them. I won’t be able to teach them – maybe not for a long while.”

“It’s not the end of the world if you’re replaced with a temporary jounin-sensei. I’m sure your precious students will love and respect you just as much once you’re back in action. But maybe you should focus on one problem at a time.”

Kakashi couldn’t help but think that that would be easier if he didn’t have so many damn problems.

“I think I’ll talk to Iruka.”

Gai smiled and patted him on the knee. “He’ll understand. Iruka is very empathetic, and he knows you’re going through a difficult time right now.”

“Yeah.”

So was Iruka. And the largest part of Kakashi didn’t want to add to the stress he could already see in every line of Iruka’s body, but Gai was right – they needed to talk about the sharingan. Not only because Kakashi felt like the knowledge would rip him open from the inside, but because preventing another tragedy was more important than upsetting Iruka. For all he knew, if he didn’t impress Iruka with exactly how much damage he could cause, Iruka could be the next person hurt by an accidental command. By telling him, Kakashi might be protecting him.

It was all true, he knew that objectively. But the justification sounded weak even inside his own head.

  


* * *

  


Gai insisted on walking him back to Iruka’s, taking a detour through Kakashi’s flat to pick up some more of his things. He spent enough time at Iruka’s that he kept some essentials there – clothes, a toothbrush, a spare mask – but not enough to last him a long-term stay. Gai saw him right to Iruka’s door, but didn’t come inside, which Kakashi was grateful for. If he needed to have a difficult conversation with Iruka, he didn’t want to wait around getting more and more worked up about it. Better to rip the plaster off and deal with the pain.

Iruka was still sitting in the lounge, staring at the sheets of paper on the coffee table. He didn’t glance up when Kakashi entered the room.

“Still working?” Kakashi asked. “You should take a break.”

He expected Iruka to argue, but instead he nodded and raised himself from the floor to the couch, curling one leg beneath him.

“I’ll make you some tea,” Kakashi offered.

“Thanks.”

Kakashi filled the electric kettle and placed it on its stand, then opened the cupboard and selected a mug. He was facing away from Iruka, but could feel his presence like a shadow in his peripherals.

“How was it, seeing people again?” Iruka asked. His voice was scratchy, as though he had a sore throat.

“Tiring. But nice. Did anyone come round while I was out?”

The kettle boiled and clicked off, and Kakashi belatedly remembered that he hadn’t prepared the tea leaves.

“Outsuki-sensei was here for a bit.”

Kakashi glanced back. Iruka was staring out through the window.

“Oh? What did he want?”

“He had some good news. There are a couple of stages to reviving you and he’d been thinking about the medical part. He’s possibly solved a problem.”

“Who knew he’d be good for something?” Kakashi closed the tea infuser and dunked it in the mug, watching the colour spread like weak ink through the water. “What was the problem?”

“Making sure your body’s healthy when I take off the seals. It’s a bit technical.”

“Well, I’ll trust you to deal with the complicated parts.”

They both lapsed into silence as Kakashi waited for the tea to brew. It seemed to take a long time.

Iruka was still looking out of the window when he brought the mug through. He placed it on the coffee table instead of delivering it into Iruka’s hands, and then sat on the armchair. Might as well get this over with.

“I need to talk to you. About the commands.”

Iruka’s head jerked around. “Did I do it again?”

“Yeah, you did. Before I left.”

“What did I say?”

“Nothing serious. You told me to be careful.”

Iruka’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh. Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?”

He was missing the point.

“No, it’s not all right. It’s not about what you said, it’s the fact that you didn’t notice how you’d phrased it. You can’t keep doing this, Iruka.”

“I didn’t mean to. It’s difficult to watch my words all the time, but I am trying.”

“That’s not good enough.”

He didn’t like this. He didn’t like talking to Iruka like he would a misbehaving genin, but he needed to be firm. If he lost his resolve this early, he knew he wouldn’t push through to the heart of the conversation. He was prepared for Iruka to argue, had the retort ready on his tongue.

“I’m sorry.”

Kakashi waited for more, but Iruka looked down at his hands and didn’t speak. The silence stretched out a little, and Kakashi didn’t know whether it meant Iruka was taking him seriously or not seriously enough. He’d never known Iruka let someone speak to him this way.

“I know you’re trying,” Kakashi said, “but it’s not enough. If you’re not careful, someone’s going to get hurt.”

“Hurt?” Now Iruka did look at him. “I wouldn’t say anything that irresponsible! Not even by accident. I promise.”

“You already have,” Kakashi said, and stopped. He couldn’t do this.

“What are you talking about?”

He had to do this.

“You told me to let them cut out my eye.”

Iruka sat very still, and then jerked clumsily to his feet and made it into the kitchen before retching into the sink. Kakashi was instantly on his feet. He’d expected a bad reaction, but not this.

“Iruka,” Kakashi said, taking a few steps across the room. “I know you didn’t realise at the time that I’d have to do what you said, and I don’t want to upset you, but I needed you to know.”

Iruka was still bent over the sink, a hand clutched in his hair, his face turned away. Kakashi took a few more steps towards him.

“It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know,” Iruka said. His voice was hoarse. “I still fucked up and it’s not all right.”

Kakashi didn’t argue, and hated himself for it.

“It’s my fault the seals didn’t work on your eye in the first place. I don’t know what I did, but there must have been some mistake. I keep messing up over and _over_.” He gripped the side of the counter. Kakashi could see the tendons in the back of his hand like thin ropes pulled taut.

“Hey, look at me,” Kakashi said. Iruka didn’t move. “Iruka, it’s going to be OK. I mean, the doctors said they can maybe give me the sharingan back, so there’s still hope, right?”

Iruka was silent.

“And you’ve been working really hard today, so you’re going to make progress soon. I have faith in you. But until then we’ve just got to deal with this as best we can. Like this morning. I really enjoyed talking to you like nothing was wrong. The only thing I can’t stand right now is that I can’t touch you, but we can fix that soon.”

Iruka slowly lowered his hand from his head and straightened up. “Would that be enough to make it better? Having enough chakra?”

Kakashi relaxed a little. Maybe that’s all Iruka needed – what they both needed – a nice, simple goal to keep them going.

“Yeah, that would make me feel much better. I’m looking forward to it.”

“I could do it now.”

Shit. Iruka wasn’t looking at him, but Kakashi could see the expression on his face. He took two steps back.

“No, you’re still not strong enough. We need to wait a couple more days.”

“I just want you to know how much I care about you,” Iruka said. He nodded to himself, as though listening hard to the buzz of his own thoughts. “I can’t do anything else, but I can prove that.”

“You don’t have to prove anything.” Should he make a run for it? Call the ANBU?

Iruka took a shaky breath, preparing himself for something, and Kakashi knew what he was going to do. There was no time to run.

“Iruka, _don’t_.”

Iruka finally turned to meet Kakashi’s eye. 

“Take my chakra,” he said. “Take as much as your body needs.”

The hunger surged, and Kakashi felt it consume him. The next moment was a blur of skin bruising under his grasping fingers and Iruka _screaming_ because of him, because Kakashi was _killing_ him.

He didn’t uncurl his fingers when Iruka slumped unconscious in his arms. Kakashi laid him down on the kitchen floor and swore desperately, but didn’t let go


	8. Chapter Eight

Iruka became aware of pain. His body felt ragged, as though he’d been wrung out like a used dishcloth. There was something on his face, and he lifted a hand to brush it away, but his arm jerked in the wrong direction and smacked his hip. He barely felt it.

“Iruka? Are you with me?”

It took too long for his eyes to focus.

“Sandaime-sama?” His voice was hoarse, and further muffled by the oxygen mask.

Sandaime was standing beside the bed, but as Iruka blinked himself more awake, he sat down on a chair.

“I was hoping not to see you in the hospital again for a long time.”

Iruka’s lips were dry, and he moistened them with his tongue. He didn’t feel quite how he’d expected to. Of course, he’d never experienced such severe chakra depletion before, but he didn’t think it was supposed to hurt, not like his nerve endings were frayed wires after an electrical surge.

“Kakashi told me what happened. What you did was incredibly stupid.”

Sandaime wasn’t shouting this time. He wasn’t angry, which was a relief, but somehow the expression on his face was worse.

“Your chakra depletion was much more serious this time. You were on life support for the whole of yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“You’ve been here for two days.”

Two days. Iruka closed his eyes.

“Where’s Kakashi?”

“He’s been in and out. I imagine he’s at your house right now. Would you like me to send someone to fetch him?”

Iruka nodded, and Sandaime got up and went to the door. From the other side, Iruka saw a white sliver of an ANBU mask, which disappeared after Sandaime had murmured a few words.

“Iruka,” Sandaime said when he was back at the bedside, “I wanted to apologise to you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I didn’t pay enough attention to how you were coping. Not only have you been grieving, but you’ve been placed under a lot of stress by this whole situation. I should have prioritised your mental health and assigned a psych nin to your case. I should have spoken to you more, _listened_ to you more.”

The first two fingers on Iruka’s left hand were spasming gently beneath the blanket. As Sandaime spoke, the tremors increased.

“You’ll be released soon,” Sandaime said. “And you’ll recover much quicker than last time, thanks to the treatment you were given. As soon as you’re able, I’m going to have you talk to someone.” He hesitated. “I’m also going to have them report on whether they think this was a suicide attempt.”

“It wasn’t,” Iruka said immediately. “If I died, no one could help Kakashi.”

He tried to lift his hand again, and this time he had enough control to reach the oxygen mask, but when he tried to adjust it his hand slipped and caught him on the jaw. Sandaime reached out to help him.

“Why can’t I move properly?”

“By the time Kakashi alerted ANBU, your chakra levels were critically low. Your body was shutting down before you even made it to the hospital. Once you were here, the only option was to artificially stimulate your chakra cores. That treatment is only used as a last resort, and for good reason – your body produced about half your optimum amount of chakra in less than twelve hours and your system couldn’t handle it, especially on top of the pathways you’d already ruptured.”

That explained why his arm was so unresponsive. It was his right arm, where the chakra pathways had already been damaged from the seals ripping out his chakra the first time.

“But I’ll be OK, right?”

“You will,” Sandaime said, and Iruka let out a breath. “It’s an extremely dangerous procedure, but the doctors assure me that if a patient survives the first twenty-four hours, they recover relatively quickly.”

“Good, because I need to get back to work.”

Sandaime turned away and raised a hand to his face. He didn’t speak, so Iruka asked the next important question.

“Is Kakashi all right now? Was the chakra enough?”

“Kakashi isn’t all right,” Sandaime said. “He’s distraught.”

Iruka could fix that.

“But does he have enough chakra?”

“Yes, he does.”

The twitching in his fingers died down to a soft ticking that barely bumped the sheet.

“That’s good.”

That was all he’d wanted to hear.

  


* * *

  


For the first time, Tenzou glimpsed the walls of Konoha and felt a ripple of dread.

“Home sweet home,” Kawaguchi muttered beside him.

They’d stopped maybe a mile from the village, at the edge of the sparse forest that petered out into farmland which stretched almost to the high stone walls. The eastern gate was in view, as was the road, which they’d been avoiding so as not to be recognised. Tenzou and Kawaguchi had been travelling in civilian clothing rather than their ANBU gear to avoid any unnecessary attention, but now that they were close to Konoha there was a real danger that they’d run into someone who knew them, with or without the masks. It was a problem Asuka had been mulling over during the three-day journey, and Tenzou was sure that they were about to do something highly illegal to get inside the village.

Asuka was resting on a tree stump, eyeing the village walls with distaste. Miho and Jun each stood as far from her as they could without catching her attention. When they’d first set out, Tenzou had worried that Miho wouldn’t be able to keep up without the use of chakra, but her uninhibited muscles had allowed her to run at a fast pace, and she had unending stamina. If anything, Jun had been the one to struggle, not having used chakra with any sort of frequency for the past ten years.

“It’s been a while,” Asuka said. She leaned back on the stump and watched dispassionately as the gates creaked open in the distance to let someone in or out. “I didn’t think I’d ever come back here. I wonder if it’s as much of a dump as I remember.”

“How are we going to get inside?” Tenzou asked.

“Well, _I’m_ going to walk in through the front door,” Asuka said. “Jun too - just a harmless stranger and his daughter. And then we’re going to meet you at the north gate.”

There were two gates leading into Konoha: east and west.

“The what?” Tenzou asked, at the same time Miho said sharply, “You know about that?”

Asuka flipped her hair back over her shoulder.

“I designed and augmented a lot of Konoha’s defences back in the day. I imagine they’ve updated some of the measures I put in place, but the north gate has been around since the walls were built. Every fortress needs a back door, after all.”

“You’re saying there’s a secret gate?” Kawaguchi asked. He turned to Miho. “How do you know about it if we don’t?”

“ANBU captains have that level of clearance,” Miho said. “The north gate is for emergency evacuations, but since it’s also a security risk, only certain people know about it. I’m really not supposed to tell you this, though I suppose Tenzou technically has that clearance level now too.”

“Excellent,” Asuka said, clapping her hands together. “Since you know where it is, you can find it from the outside, and I’ll open it and let you in.”

“It’s really that easy?” Tenzou asked.

“Depends whether my signature is still accepted by the wards. But if it isn’t, I can bypass them – one way or another.”

Tenzou didn’t like the sound of that, but he didn’t ask any further questions. If he knew the details of Asuka’s plans, it might be more difficult to go along with them, and at this point he didn’t want to have to choose between doing his job and saving Miho. He couldn’t be sure he would do the right thing.

“Well, no time like the present,” Asuka said, standing up. She beckoned to Jun. “You, come with me. And you.” She turned to Miho. “Take these two to the north gate and wait for me there. Don’t let them try to contact anyone. If they do, kill them.”

Miho nodded stiffly and Tenzou pushed down his simmering anger.

Asuka turned and started to slip through the trees towards the road. Jun slunk after her. “I’ll see you later. Try not to miss me too much.”

Kawaguchi flipped the finger at her retreating back.

 

Miho led them to a part of the northern wall that looked to Tenzou’s eyes like solid stone. Wherever the gate was, it was well hidden.

“There are wards here,” Kawaguchi said. He lightly brushed his hand along the stones. “Good ones. Some kind of illusion?”

Tenzou touched the wall where Kawaguchi was standing and concentrated. If he focused, he could feel the faintest hint of chakra from the wards. It would take a very good sensor to feel it without knowing where to look.

“Yeah, something like that,” Miho said. “Wouldn’t surprise me if Asuka made the original wards herself.”

She sat down, leaning back against the wall, and after a moment Tenzou joined her. Kawaguchi was still exploring the wall where the gate was hidden from view.

“Don’t mess with anything,” Miho warned him. “If you try and open it from this side it sets off an alarm in the Tower.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” Kawaguchi confessed. “This is high level stuff.”

Tenzou leaned his head back and stared at the tops of the trees. There was forest stretching for the next several miles from the north side of the village, and he wasn’t worried about anyone stumbling across them as they waited for Asuka to let them inside.

“This is it,” Miho mumbled next to him. “We’re officially breaking into our own village. While the enemy walks in through the front gate, no less.”

“If we get through this without ending up as missing nin, I’m going to suggest some serious security upgrades,” Tenzou said. He glanced at Miho, who was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest and staring into the middle distance. “How are you holding up?”

“Actually, I think I might have hurt my leg with all that running. It’s hard to tell without the pain, but it feels a bit strange when I step on it. Unsteady.”

“Which leg?”

Miho indicated, and Tenzou pulled up her right trouser leg to take a look. He couldn’t see any redness or swelling, but then Miho’s body probably didn’t react that way anymore.

“I’ll cast a healing jutsu just in case.”

“Thanks.”

As Tenzou worked, he murmured, “When I asked how you were doing, I didn’t mean physically.”

“I know.” She watched his hands hover above the skin of her calves, targeting the muscles. “She’s going to tell me to kill you once she’s got the book. I’m sure of it.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

Miho put a hand on Tenzou’s arm and he reluctantly met her gaze.

“Promise me something. If it comes down to it, promise me you’ll kill me before you let me hurt you.”

Tenzou looked back down at the green glow of his hands.

“I don’t know if it’s possible to kill you again.”

“Tenzou, please.”

“I promise,” Kawaguchi said. Tenzou looked up. Kawaguchi was standing a little distance away, leaning against the wall. “I won’t let you kill anyone.”

“Don’t say that so easily,” Tenzou said. There was an edge to his voice he hadn’t expected.

Kawaguchi fixed him with a level stare. “What else am I supposed to do? Let myself die? Let you die? It’s not about what’s _easy_ , Tenzou – we’re so far beyond easy that even I can’t joke about it. But if it comes down to it and I have to choose between you and Miho, I’m going to make the practical choice.”

The green light emitting from Tenzou’s palms winked out as his concentration slipped.

“You need to consider the worst-case scenario,” Miho said, quiet but firm. “And you need to consider it now so that when the time comes you won’t hesitate.”

“ _If_ the time comes,” Tenzou corrected sharply.

Kawaguchi ambled over and lightly ruffled Miho’s hair.

“Yeah, don’t give up yet. Preparing for the worst doesn’t mean accepting it. We’re going to fight this all the way.”

Behind him, there was a quiet, smooth sound, and Tenzou snapped his gaze up to see a door in the wall where there’d been only stone before. There was no handle, only smooth, plain wood, and as he rose cautiously to his feet it opened inwards. He’d been expecting a large gate like the main village entrances, but instead the door was small and discreet.

“That was fast,” Kawaguchi said.

Asuka stepped through the doorway, expression smug.

“Don’t stand there all day,” she said. “Get inside. There _are_ patrols around the walls, you know.”

Tenzou held out a hand to help Miho to her feet. She was still avoiding putting too much weight on her right leg, and he made a mental note to finish healing her as soon as possible.

“How did you open it?” Miho asked.

“I make my wards so that it’s incredibly difficult to erase my signature from them. Not impossible, but either Sarutobi trusts me too much or his second best seals master isn’t up to scratch.” She tapped a finger against her chin. “I wonder if that’s Iruka-kun these days. A little young, but he did have me as a teacher. That’s more than anyone else can say.”

She stepped back so that the three of them could pass through the door. When she shut it behind them, Tenzou could see the intricate pattern of paper seals attached to the door and to the wall around it. The ink was the same brownish-red colour as Miho’s seals, and Tenzou suspected it wasn’t ink at all.

Asuka placed a hand to the seal in the centre of the door and re-activated the illusion. The door melted back into the stone.

Tenzou looked around. The north of the village was taken up by the training fields, and only a couple of hundred metres away loomed the high fences bordering the Forest of Death.

“Where’s Jun-san?” he asked.

“Gathering supplies in town. He’s a better behaved pet than the rest of you – I trust him on his own.”

Before they’d left, Asuka had promised that she’d let Yua go free once they left the village border, and she’d sent off a clone as they’d passed the widow’s cottage where Miho had died. If Yua really was still alive, she’d be home with her mother by now, but since Jun’s wife had no way of contacting them, it was impossible to know whether Asuka was telling the truth or whether she was simply unwilling to let Jun know she’d murdered his daughter. Tenzou recognised it as the controlling system of punishment and reward: _I’ve shown your daughter mercy but I know where she lives._

“Where exactly are we going to stay?” Tenzou asked. “And how are we supposed to move around the village without being recognised?”

“There are a couple of abandoned clan compounds in the village these days – a perfect place for a luxurious hideout. I was thinking Uchiha.”

“There’s still a boy who lives there,” Tenzou said. He fuzzily remembered the quiet boy he’d seen training with Kakashi. If Asuka asked them to kill him, Tenzou wouldn’t allow it.

Asuka pulled a face. “And someone would notice if he went missing. Although I suppose I could pull the same henge trick as last time. Wonder how much clearance the only living Uchiha has…”

“The Hatake compound is empty,” Tenzou said. He didn’t want to put Kakashi in danger, but the chances of him visiting the compound were slim. As far as he knew, Kakashi only stopped by two or three times a year to take care of the upkeep of the buildings. The land itself was taken care of by genin teams during the summer, but it was too late in the year for the lawns to need trimming or the trees to be cut back. Hopefully.

“What, did that Kakashi kid die?” Asuka asked. “I’d have thought I’d hear about something like that.”

“No, he’s alive. But he doesn’t live in the compound and he very rarely visits.”

Asuka considered this. “Miho, is he telling me the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Well, all right then. And in answer to your second question, you three are going to hang about in the Forest for the rest of the afternoon and wait for me to come fetch you tonight. That’ll give me chance to pick the compound’s wards and make myself at home.”

“There could be people training in the Forest at this time,” Kawaguchi pointed out.

“Then you’ll have to make sure you find a good hiding place. Because if anybody does find you,” – she looked at Miho – “you’re going to kill them. And the usual rule applies to your team. If they try and contact anybody or wander off without you, kill them.”

“Is that your answer to everything?” Kawaguchi asked. “Kill them?”

Asuka smiled at him. “Don’t tempt me to get more creative. Now, off you go. Sit tight for a few hours and I’ll see you sometime after midnight.”

  


* * *

  


The next time Iruka woke up, Kakashi was there.

He hadn’t realised he’d dozed off after Sandaime had left – or perhaps while Sandaime had still been in the room, his memories were hazy – and when he drifted back to consciousness it took him a moment to realise there was someone else in the room with him. Kakashi was standing near the door, which was closed behind him, and he was wearing his mask and the black eyepatch. Between that and Iruka’s sleep-clouded vision, he couldn’t tell what expression Kakashi was wearing.

“Kakashi?”

Kakashi only hesitated for a moment before he came over and sat beside the bed.

“Can you take your mask off?”

Iruka didn’t wait for Kakashi to respond, but instead reached up a clumsy hand and tried to hook his fingers around the mask himself. His left hand was more responsive than his right, but he didn’t quite have the fine motor control yet to make his fingers do what he wanted. He brushed against Kakashi’s face and Kakashi twitched away instinctively. Iruka barely registered the reaction – he was too enthralled with what he’d just done. He’d touched Kakashi and there hadn’t been any pain.

“I’ll do it,” Kakashi said. He sounded as though he hadn’t spoken for days.

He pulled the mask down, but Iruka reached again and managed to cup his jaw. Kakashi froze, but didn’t pull away.

“I missed you,” Iruka said. He’d meant to say that he’d missed the touch of Kakashi’s skin, but fumbled the words. It didn’t matter. Kakashi understood.

“I missed this too.”

Kakashi’s skin was cool to the touch, and there was no growth of stubble even though Iruka knew he’d stopped bothering to shave. The shade of the skin might be too pale, but the line of the jaw was the same, and when Kakashi placed a hand gently and hesitantly over his own, Iruka felt a rush of familiarity that soothed him like nothing else had since Kakashi’s death.

“Does it hurt?” Kakashi asked. Iruka didn’t know if he was referring to their touch or his damaged body.

“No. I’m fine.” He did hurt, somewhere, but between whatever drugs they had him on and the distraction of Kakashi, he barely felt it.

“That’s good.”

Iruka’s arm was growing tired. He fought to keep it up, but it dropped a couple of inches without his permission. Kakashi took his hand and gently rested it back on the bed. He left his own hand intertwined with Iruka’s, rubbing his thumb across the back of Iruka’s wrist.

“Iruka,” he said and then stopped and looked away. “Iruka, please don’t ever use me to hurt yourself. Never again.”

He looked like he wanted to cry. Iruka had never seen Kakashi cry.

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to help you.”

“I thought you were going to die.” Kakashi’s voice broke. He squeezed Iruka’s hand until the bones ground together. “The doctors told me – they said they had to use a treatment that’s so dangerous they never even consider it unless the patient’s going to die anyway. And then there were a couple of times yesterday when they thought you weren’t going to make it.”

Iruka tried to push himself up. “I didn’t know it would be that bad.”

“You didn’t think about it. You didn’t _care_. But I need you to care about what happens to you.”

“It’s OK. I won’t die while you need me.”

“That’s not what I mean!” Kakashi moved from the chair to sit on the side of the bed, still holding Iruka’s hand, their hips pressed together. “You’ve been so focused on helping me that you’ve stopped caring about yourself. I need you to start thinking about your own safety and health again. _Not_ for my sake – for your sake.”

“I will. But first I need to fix you.”

“No! Look, this is probably going to take a long time. We both know that. So stop putting the rest of your life on hold until you’ve figured this out. Stop ignoring the details you don’t want to look at, otherwise you might find that when this is all over you’ve lost something precious.”

Did he mean himself? Iruka felt his heart pick up.

“Like what?”

“Your job, your freedom, Naruto. I’m not the only important thing in your life, Iruka. You’ve been risking a lot for me, and I’m grateful you care about me that much, but we need to get everything back under control. Do you see?”

Kakashi was looking at him so earnestly that all Iruka could do was nod. Kakashi’s shoulders slumped a little and a small smile ghosted over his lips.

“Good. You know, Iruka, you’ve been here for me all this time but this isn’t a one-way street. I’m here for you too. I’m going to look after you.”

He stroked Iruka’s hair, and then leaned forwards and placed a kiss on Iruka’s temple.

“Kakashi.”

Iruka fumbled with the oxygen mask, and Kakashi gently moved his hand away and took over, pulling it carefully down so that it rested on Iruka’s throat. The air tasted strange without it.

Kakashi ran a thumb along Iruka’s lips, as if checking they were real, and then kissed them, lightly, almost reverently, as though it was their first kiss all over again. He pulled back but stayed close, face hovering over Iruka’s, fingers carding through his hair again. Iruka felt a tear slide down towards his ear. He laughed wetly.

“That’s two,” he said. “You still owe me twenty-six.”

Kakashi shifted and brought his legs up onto the bed, so that he was lying next to Iruka, propped up on an arm to lean over him. He rested their foreheads together.

“Good thing we have all afternoon.”

  


* * *

  


That night, after Kakashi had left the hospital, he spent a long time wandering restlessly from street to street, keeping to the shadows, needing to move but having no destination in mind. He was aware that Hawk was following him, but at a polite distance, keeping an eye on him but not planning to demand he go home or back to Iruka’s house. It was an irritant but not overly intrusive. Eventually Kakashi found himself at the south end of town, in the rundown neighbourhood where Naruto lived. He sunk down in the doorway of a shuttered shop, long closed and abandoned, and leaned his head in his hands.

He could feel Iruka, a pinprick on the edge of his consciousness, even from this distance. There was no hunger now, and no exhaustion – he felt more normal and healthy than he’d done for days, at least physically. Emotionally, he no longer knew the difference between up and down, and he wished he could have stayed in the hospital because being with Iruka had brought him focus, if only for a short while.

In the two days since he’d almost killed Iruka, he’d felt a lot of things. They were feelings without direction or expression, a tangled mess of different coloured strings that he was only just starting to pick at to try and unravel them.

Before Iruka had woken up, he’d thought he’d have a choice: to forgive Iruka, or to not forgive him. And then he’d spoken to Iruka and realised that it wasn’t about forgiveness, because that implied it was about the wrong and right of what had happened between them. Kakashi didn’t think he knew the difference anymore. He was certain that Iruka didn’t. And if neither of them could tell what was wrong, forgiveness was meaningless.

The only thing he still knew with glass-sharp clarity was that he was in love with Iruka. He clung to that. It was all he knew how to do.

 

Midway through the next morning, Kakashi found himself summoned to the Hokage’s office. He’d returned to Iruka’s house sometime during the night and then made his way back to the hospital as soon as he thought Iruka might be awake. Iruka had seemed more himself, and Kakashi had watched as a physiotherapist had talked him through a few exercises. Overnight, Iruka’s body had stabilised and although fine motor control was still outside his grasp, he was able to move around and walk without a problem. Apparently when chakra core stimulation didn’t kill people, it afforded them a rapid recovery.

The doctors had described it to him like a man dying of thirst beside a dried up riverbed. The treatment Iruka had received was like someone breaking a dam and flooding the river. The dying man is in a very dangerous place – he might be washed away and drown, and since he’s too weak to move, that’s the likely outcome. But if he survives, he’ll have all the water he could ever need. He’ll recover from his thirst in a couple of days. Iruka was currently that man, who’d survived the flood of chakra to his system and was now using it to heal himself.

An ANBU gestured for him to enter the Hokage’s office and Kakashi stepped inside. Sandaime was waiting for him behind his desk, face grim.

“Please don’t give me any more bad news,” Kakashi said as he crossed over to the desk. “I don’t think I could take it.”

“I hear Iruka’s going to be released today.”

There were the usual two ANBU guards in the room, standing unobtrusively back from the desk but close enough that they could intervene immediately if needed. Kakashi wondered if the whole of ANBU knew about his condition by now. He wouldn’t be surprised if he and Iruka had been red-flagged as a threat to village security.

“Yeah, I’m taking him home after lunch.”

Sandaime rested his hands on the desk.

“Tell me honestly – do you think it’s best for you and Iruka to stay together at the moment?”

Kakashi tensed. “Yes, I do.”

Sandaime watched him closely. “I can’t allow him to hurt himself again. Or anyone else.”

“He didn’t drain himself of chakra because he was trying to hurt himself,” Kakashi said. “He did it because he was trying to help me. The two things just happened to coincide.”

“And you want to continue living with him? Even after this?”

In the past two days, Kakashi had had a lot of time to think. There was no hesitation when he answered now.

“We may have been together for less than a year, but I’m serious about Iruka. I’m not going to run away because he’s depressed or unstable or whatever’s going on with him right now. Spending time apart isn’t going to do him any good – if anything it’ll make him worse, and I won’t let that happen. Even if it’s hard and even if he makes more mistakes, I’d rather be there and work through this with him instead of foisting all the responsibility for both of us onto his shoulders.”

Sandaime tapped a finger on the desk and then nodded. “I’m not going to separate you because I agree with you – it might make Iruka worse. And that isn’t something I want either. But if anything else happens, I’ll have no choice.” There was a note of warning in his tone.

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t.” 

Kakashi hoped he could stick to his word, but he was very conscious that he wasn’t the one in control.

  


* * *

  


The Hatake compound was large and had a timeless feel, as though it hadn’t been touched for decades. The furniture was covered in dust sheets, clothes still hung in the wardrobes, and there were pots and pans in the kitchen cupboards. Last night, when they’d ghosted through the darkened streets and slipped through the entryway into the compound, Tenzou hadn’t had chance to notice the details, but that morning he felt the heavy weight of guilt for inviting the enemy into such a well-preserved wound.

It felt like it had been months since he’d last seen Kakashi. The memory of Miho’s funeral seemed alien now, as though it had happened to someone else. He’d sat up with her for a short while the night before and healed her leg as best he could, and she’d stared out through the window as though she could see through the compound walls and into the village beyond. He’d thought she might have been thinking of her father, but he hadn’t asked. She’d still been in the room when he and Kawaguchi had woken that morning, their protector or jailer – Tenzou couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

They’d spent the morning cleaning the main compound building into a more comfortable state while Asuka had shut herself in a room with Jun to go through the books and scrolls she’d brought with her. By the time they’d eaten lunch, she was ready to move out.

“We’re going to split up,” she said when they were sitting around the dining table. “Tenzou, you’re going to accompany Miho to Iruka-kun’s house and bring me the book.”

It was a weekday so Iruka should be teaching in the Academy. That would make things both easier and harder – easier because they wouldn’t have to worry about Iruka putting up a fight and harder because they’d have to break through his wards.

“How’s Miho supposed to disguise herself?” Tenzou asked. “I can use a henge but she can’t.”

“For God’s sake, you’re ANBU – surely you can manage a simple genjutsu.”

Tenzou exchanged a look with Miho. Genjutsu was Team Phoenix’s collective weak point; none of them were particularly skilled at it, although Tenzou was arguably the strongest thanks to training with Kakashi. He could probably pull of an illusion to at least disguise their faces without making it too obvious.

“I guess so.”

“What about me?” Kawaguchi asked.

Asuka smiled at him. “We’re going to spend some quality time together down at the archives. There are some materials I need and you’re going to get them for me.”

Kawaguchi raised his hand with the broken finger. “Casting a henge is going to be a little difficult.”

“You’ll do what you’re told.”

Tenzou bristled. “If you make him cast jutsu like that, his finger won’t heal.”

“That isn’t my problem.” She turned cold eyes on him. “What are you still doing here? You’ve had your mission briefing – get to it. Do whatever you have to, but bring me that book.”

Miho stood, but Tenzou hesitated, eyes on Kawaguchi’s hand.

“It’s fine,” Kawaguchi said, waving him off. “Don’t worry about me.”

Miho put a warning hand on Tenzou’s shoulder and he nodded and got to his feet. There wasn’t anything he could do – not yet. But if they managed to get the book, the time for betrayal would come soon.

 

Despite the genjutsu disguising their faces, Tenzou felt exposed when they crept out through the compound gates and into the village streets. The Hatake compound itself was right at the edge of town, secluded enough that they could come and go without being seen as long as they were careful, but walking in the open with only a low-grade genjutsu to hide behind was making Tenzou’s nerves thrum with tension.

“Relax,” Miho muttered. “Imagine you’re on an infiltration mission.”

“I hate infiltration missions.”

“At least this is an easy one. If we’re lucky, we won’t even have to speak to anyone, much less fight.”

Tenzou had only been to Iruka’s apartment once before, but he’d made a point of remembering where it was. After all, Kakashi was difficult enough to pin down at the best of times – there was no point giving him another bolthole when he was trying to avoid responsibility or commitments. As it was, they managed to find the apartment building quickly and easily enough and no one stopped them on the way.

“How well do you know Iruka?” Miho asked as they climbed the stairwell up towards Iruka’s floor.

“Not as well as I’d like. I’d never spoken to him before he and Kakashi got involved, but I’ve hung out with the two of them a few times since then.”

They stepped out onto the pathway that snaked around the edge of the building and stopped in front of Iruka’s door. Tenzou was fairly sure Iruka wouldn’t be home, and the quiet presence of the wards on the door supported that assumption, but to be on the safe side he concentrated on what he could feel through the wood. A single chakra signature burned faintly inside.

“He’s home.”

“Shit,” Miho muttered. “Guess there’s nothing for it. We’ll have to take it by force.”

It was a shame that Tenzou had to conceal his identity – if he’d shown up in his ANBU uniform, Iruka would probably have given him the book without question. As it was, the faster someone found out what they were doing, the faster they’d be branded as traitors. 

As well as that consideration, Tenzou had another concern. Asuka hadn’t told them to use lethal force, but he was worried about what she might have said to Miho while he hadn’t been in the room. He hesitated.

“You should stay out here. I can handle it alone.”

For a moment Miho looked as though she might argue, but then she simply nodded and stepped back, out of sight of the door.

Tenzou took a breath and knocked. At the very least, Iruka wouldn’t recognise him.

The door opened, but it wasn’t Iruka. A blond boy stood in the doorway peering up at him, and Tenzou recognised him as Kakashi’s student, Uzumaki Naruto.

“Who are you?” Naruto asked. Tenzou remembered him as an energetic and painfully loud child, but that wasn’t in evidence today. Naruto’s face was pale and his hair was unwashed. There was a day-old stain on his t-shirt.

“I’m a friend of Iruka’s.” The fact that it was true made it worse than a lie would have been. “Is he home?”

“He’s in the hospital again.” Naruto looked more resigned than upset, as though Iruka being hospitalised was simply the way of things. “Kakashi-sensei said he was in,” – his face scrunched up in thought – “intense care. They wouldn’t let me in because they don’t think I’m his family.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. Everyone keeps lying to me.” He glared up at Tenzou as though daring him to add to the lies.

“I’m looking for a book that Iruka was studying,” Tenzou said. “Can I come in and find it?”

“The one with all the weird seals?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

Naruto opened the door wider and stepped back. Tenzou crossed the threshold and the door clicked shut behind them.

Iruka’s flat was larger than Tenzou remembered, or maybe it only seemed that way without Kakashi and Iruka inside. Naruto led him through into the lounge and picked up a book from the coffee table. It was covered in familiar dark leather.

“Thanks,” Tenzou said, holding his palm out, but Naruto kept the book tightly in his hands.

“Do you know what they do? The seals?” Tenzou didn’t answer, but either his face gave him away or Naruto had already decided that he must know. “I’ll only give it to you if you tell me.”

“I’m sorry, but your clearance isn’t high enough for that.”

Tenzou’s hand was still out, waiting. But Naruto was equally determined.

“Do they bring dead people back to life?”

That was the last question Tenzou had expected. He drew in a sharp breath.

“What makes you say that?”

But Naruto took three rapid steps back. “What happened to your face?”

Belatedly, Tenzou realised his surprise had caused the genjutsu to slip. Before he could say anything, three loud knocks came from the door. Both of them started and turned towards the hallway.

“Open up.” It was Miho’s voice.

Tenzou glanced at Naruto and then went to open the door. Miho moved past him, dragging a prone form in ANBU armour.

“Bear was watching the building,” Miho said, lying her on the hallway floor. “She asked me why I was hanging about – I think she was keeping watch on Iruka’s apartment. I didn’t know what to do, so I knocked her out.” She looked up and took in Tenzou’s face properly. “What the fuck happened to the genjutsu?”

Behind them, Tenzou heard a small cry and turned to see Naruto standing in the lounge doorway, one hand over his mouth and round eyes staring at Bear. This was going bad very quickly.

“Give me the book, Naruto-kun,” Tenzou said. “I really don’t want to have to take it from you.”

Naruto clutched the book to his chest. “You’re not Iruka-sensei’s friend! You’re _bad guys_.”

“He’s not,” Miho said, gesturing to Tenzou. Her voice was thick. “But I am.”

She stepped forwards, and Tenzou remembered Asuka’s words – _do whatever you have to_. He could see Naruto’s future in the flex of Miho’s fingers.

There were familiar voices from beyond the open front door, and then a shout of alarm.

“What’s happening? Who’s –?” It was Iruka, standing in the doorway, eyes flicking from Bear to Tenzou to Naruto.

Well, shit. So much for not being seen. And then Tenzou’s gaze drifted past Iruka and his heart dropped in his chest. Kakashi took Iruka by the arm and pulled him back, eyes locked on Tenzou.

“Tenzou, what’s going on?”

Miho turned around.

The reaction was instant: Kakashi pushed Iruka to the side, out of sight from inside the house, and dropped into a defensive stance. Tenzou could almost see the thoughts flickering rapid-fire behind his eyes.

“Miho,” Kakashi breathed. “Sandaime-sama said someone would come for the book, but I never guessed it would be another dead person.”

“Another?” Tenzou asked sharply.

“I can’t let you take that book. We need it.”

“Senpai, what do you mean, _another_?”

Kakashi reached out and took Tenzou’s wrist, and then placed it over his chest. Tenzou felt nausea bubble up inside him and he ripped his hand away and pulled up Kakashi’s shirt.

“ _No_.”

The seals swirled over Kakashi’s stomach, and Tenzou touched them with a trembling hand. He swallowed hard.

“Fucking B-rank missions,” Kakashi murmured. “Something always goes wrong.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Naruto blurted out. Tenzou turned and saw him watching them with wide eyes. “Kakashi-sensei, you really died, didn’t you? Iruka-sensei said – he said he could fix everything. He did something to you with those seals.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Kakashi said softly. “God, Naruto. Why do you only notice things when you’re not supposed to?”

Miho had turned back to Naruto too, and Tenzou didn’t know what to do. Two of his best friends needed him and he could only choose one. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Miho slammed Naruto against the wall. Kakashi dived down the hallway and grabbed her around the waist, dragging her back and throwing her to the ground, pinning her. Miho surged upwards, muscles straining, almost breaking free. Behind them, Naruto reached for a weapon of his own, ready to try and help Kakashi. There was too much raw strength at play – someone was going to get seriously hurt.

“Tenzou, what’s _happening_?” Iruka was at his elbow, uncomprehending and freshly released, Naruto had said, from the hospital.

Iruka cried out as Tenzou pulled him forward and circled an arm around him to press a blade to his throat. Kakashi looked up and froze, and Miho managed to flip them over, straddling him, her eyes already on Naruto again.

“Miho, I’ve got this,” Tenzou snapped. “Leave Naruto, just hold Kakashi down.”

“Why are you doing this?” Kakashi asked, bucking furiously in Miho’s hold. “I understand why Miho’s here – she can’t help but do as she’s told. But why are you helping her? Don’t you see? Iruka can help her too – if we get her to T&I we can keep her safe until we find a cure. ANBU can hunt down whoever’s trying to control you.”

It was so tempting. For a moment, Tenzou really thought they were saved.

“We can’t,” Miho said. “Even if we don’t go back, she’ll still have Kawaguchi. She’ll use him to get us back. Or to punish us.”

Tenzou remembered the _crack_ Kawaguchi’s finger had made. He thought of the fresh pink scar across Miho’s neck and her blood in the basement of the widow’s cottage.

“Naruto-kun,” he said, “bring me the book.”

“You’re bluffing,” Kakashi said. “You would never kill Iruka – or any other Konoha shinobi.”

“No,” Tenzou said, “but I’ll hurt him.” He could feel Iruka breathing shortly, his back pressed against Tenzou’s chest. He didn’t know any longer if he was bluffing or not. Only that it didn’t matter, because Naruto wasn’t going to risk it. Naruto thought he was a bad guy. Maybe he wasn’t wrong.

Naruto stepped over Bear’s still body and shakily held out the book. Tenzou took it, but didn’t move the knife from Iruka’s throat.

“We’ll bring it back,” he said. “Somehow, when Miho’s fixed, I’ll bring it back to you. I won’t let you stay like this, Kakashi, I promise.”

“Who the fuck is doing this?” Kakashi asked. “Just give me the name and maybe ANBU can do something.”

“Don’t,” Miho said loudly, panicked. “You know what she’s always telling me to do if you try and ask for help.”

Tenzou took a couple of measured breaths.

“Did you knock out Bear before or after I dropped the genjutsu?” he asked.

“She didn’t recognise me.”

“Good.” There was hope. They could salvage this. “I know this is asking a lot, but I need you three to keep this from ANBU, just for a little while.”

“We can’t,” Iruka said quietly. He was remarkably calm for someone with a knife hovering over his carotid. “Sandaime-sama knows, ANBU know – there’s no way we can pretend we still have the book.”

“That’s fine, just don’t tell them who took it.”

“It’ll be better for you if we do. I don’t really understand what’s going on, but you’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

Tenzou almost laughed at the understatement. “That’s putting it lightly. But if ANBU start hunting us down, they won’t understand. We can’t afford to be arrested right now. Please, do me this one favour.”

“All right,” Kakashi said. Iruka stiffened, surprised, but didn’t argue. “I understand. Your hands are tied and you’re doing what you think is best. But be careful, Tenzou. Whoever you’re dealing with isn’t going to let you bring that book back.”

“I’ll find a way to save both of you,” Tenzou said. On the floor, Bear groaned softly. They were out of time. “Iruka, you did the seals, right? Tell Kakashi not to move until we’ve gone.” He pressed the knife harder against Iruka’s throat.

“Kakashi, don’t move,” Iruka said softly.

Miho cautiously rose to her feet, and Kakashi lay where she’d left him. Naruto had backed into the kitchen doorway, eyes never leaving the glint of metal at Iruka’s throat.

“I’m sorry,” Miho said, and then she slipped past Tenzou out onto the walkway and broke into a run. Tenzou waited a beat and then pushed Iruka forwards, whirling and following Miho onto the stairwell, casting the genjutsu as he ran.

There were no sounds of pursuit from behind them, but they kept running. It wasn’t unusual to see shinobi making haste through the village, and nobody stopped them as they tore through the streets, heading first the wrong way and then doubling back through the alleys and shadows to throw off any pursuers. When they made it back to the Hatake compound, the book was still clutched tightly in Tenzou’s hand.

They’d done it, but Tenzou didn’t feel any sense of satisfaction, only a sickness that he couldn’t shake off. Miho was dead, Kakashi was dead.

Who would be next?


	9. Chapter Nine

“What’s going on?” Iruka asked, raising a hand to his throat and checking that Tenzou’s knife hadn’t broken the skin. “That woman – you called her Miho. Isn’t she the one who died? You went to her funeral. You can move,” he added.

Kakashi pushed himself up and moved to kneel by Bear. He parted her hair, checking for a head wound.

“You remember how Sandaime-sama said the book came from an ANBU mission? And that whoever originally owned the book had been testing it and would probably want it back?”

Iruka took a moment to turn that over in his mind. “You’re saying that Miho-san and Tenzou were on that ANBU team?”

“No way,” Naruto piped up. “If they were ANBU, they wouldn’t have tried to hurt us.”

He was still standing in the kitchen doorway and Iruka crossed the hallway to him, glancing over him.

“Are you hurt? Naruto, what were you doing here?”

“I’m fine. And they wouldn’t let me in the hospital so I came to wait for you here.” Naruto looked down and then back up, his face set in determination. “Tell me what’s going on! Why did those bad guy ANBU want your book? Do they want to bring dead people back to life too?”

Before Iruka could answer, Bear grunted and sat up, Kakashi helping her with an arm around her back.

“You’re OK,” Kakashi said. “They’re gone, but they took the book. You were hit the on the head – you should go to the hospital and get it checked out.”

“Is anyone else hurt?” Bear reached up to adjust her mask, looking around to take in Iruka and Naruto.

“No, we’re fine,” Iruka said.

“Do you know who they were? I think the woman was using a henge or a genjutsu – I felt something when she got close.”

Iruka hesitated. Kakashi had promised he wouldn’t tell ANBU. He’d said he would give Tenzou time to try and help Miho.

“It was two members of Team Phoenix,” Kakashi said. “But not the two you’re thinking of.”

  


* * *

  


Asuka and Kawaguchi were still out by the time Tenzou and Miho returned to the compound. Jun popped his head nervously out of the kitchen at the sound of their footsteps. His face was pinched and he sucked at his bottom lip for a moment before speaking.

“I was making a cup of tea. Would you like one?”

He was staring hard at Tenzou, who nodded and passed the book to Miho.

“Go put this somewhere safe.”

Tenzou closed the kitchen door behind him and waited.

“You got it then?” Jun asked, voice low. “That was the book?”

“Yeah, we got it.”

Jun ran a hand through his hair, back and forth through the short strands.

“She’s going to kill one of us. Soon.”

Tenzou thought it more likely that Asuka was going to kill all of them, but Jun clearly knew something that had him spooked.

“What do you mean?”

“She’s preparing to make a second zombie. Now she has the book again, she has everything she needs.”

Tenzou leaned against the kitchen counter. He’d considered the possibility that Asuka had plans along those lines. She’d mentioned something about Miho being a prototype, which suggested she had plans to create more undead. For what purpose, however, he had no idea.

“Preparing how? What else does she need besides the seals?”

Jun glanced towards the door, listening to make sure Miho hadn’t come back.

“To activate the seals, she has to fill a body’s chakra system with her own chakra. Doing that all at once would kill her, so I wondered if she was storing her chakra somehow. Today I went through her things and found some chakra-storing seals.”

Tenzou had never heard of such a thing.

“What are those?”

“Exactly what they sound like. They’re supposed to be used medically, but they’re still being researched and developed so they’re not widely used yet. You put your chakra into the seals and store it somewhere safe, and then if you become depleted, you can draw the chakra back out of it. Like storing blood for transfusions.”

“And how much chakra has she stored?”

“I couldn’t tell, but there were five seals. Considering how good she is, each one can probably hold a lot of chakra.”

“So maybe there’s enough for more than one,” Tenzou murmured. “But that means she must be low on chakra right now.”

“Activating well-made seals doesn’t take much chakra. She can still use her weapons of choice.”

But it meant that Asuka might be low enough that she couldn’t use much jutsu. Now that Tenzou thought about it, that might be why she’d refused to drop her henge even once since she’d met them – once wearing the henge it would only use a trickle of chakra to maintain, but changing from her body to her henge when she needed it would use more. It was possible, then, that when the time came they could overpower her more easily than they’d thought.

Although, Tenzou realised with a jolt, she must have been preparing for Miho’s reanimation in the same way, and chakra depletion hadn’t stopped her from killing an ANBU captain.

“There’s something else,” Jun said, his voice a mere murmur now, so that Tenzou had to lean closer to catch the words. “I always told her that I didn’t know the code my father used to write the book. Even when she took my daughter, I told her I couldn’t translate it.”

Tenzou drew in a breath. “You were lying?”

Jun pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket and thrust it at Tenzou, who unfolded it and looked at the strings of letters. It meant nothing to him.

“That’s the cipher for the code,” Jun said, just as Miho silently opened the kitchen door.

Tenzou folded the paper hastily and slipped it into his own pocket, but by the look on Miho’s face he hadn’t been fast enough.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I heard that. But I won’t have to tell her unless she asks. I came to warn you that she just came in through the gate.”

The sound of the front door opening made them all look up. Jun stiffly turned his back and started filling the kettle. He was frightened, and Tenzou felt his own pulse pick up as Asuka called cheerfully down the hallway. If they could get the cipher to Iruka and subdue Asuka, they wouldn’t need her to work on curing Miho.

Maybe they weren’t completely out of luck after all.

  


* * *

  


“You _knew_ Miho had been compromised?” Kakashi demanded. “And you didn’t think we should know about that?”

Bear had escorted the three of them straight to the Hokage’s office, and it hadn’t escaped Kakashi’s notice that neither she nor Sandaime had seemed surprised when he’d told them that Miho was also undead.

“We got a message a few days ago,” Bear said. She’d refused to be checked over by a medic until they’d given a full report but she didn’t seem concussed.

“However, we didn’t know that the whole of Team Phoenix had come under the killer’s influence,” Sandaime said. He was sitting behind his desk, his hands clasped together on the wood. “Considering that you know the team, Kakashi, I probably would have told you had I known, but under the circumstances,” – his eyes flicked to Iruka – “it didn’t seem like a good idea.”

Of course, it was completely reasonable for Sandaime not to share ANBU-level information with a potentially unstable shinobi who’d recently broken several laws, but it didn’t stop Kakashi feeling righteously pissed off.

Naruto was standing close by Iruka’s side – the side farthest from Kakashi, by accident or design – and it was only Iruka’s hand gently squeezing his shoulder that was keeping him quiet for the moment. Iruka himself was being unusually quiet, and Kakashi suspected that he was repressing the urge to ask Kakashi why he had lied to Tenzou.

Lying to Tenzou made Kakashi feel as bad as lying to Gai, but he’d had no choice. There was no doubt that Tenzou was a capable ANBU, but it didn’t take much deduction to see that he was in over his head. An unknown enemy had already murdered his captain and somehow managed to convince Tenzou and Kawaguchi to go along with whatever her plans were. Kakashi knew Team Phoenix well – they were closer than the average ANBU cell, which was both a strength and a weakness. When one of them was compromised, they all were.

As far as he could see, the only way to help Tenzou was to send back-up. Maybe he and Kawaguchi would get in trouble, but losing ANBU status was better than being killed. More selfishly, he couldn’t risk losing the book forever.

“As it is,” Sandaime continued, “I’ve sent Hawk to alert ANBU and start a search of the village. If they’re still here, we’ll find them.”

“What will you do if you catch them?” Iruka spoke up. “To Tenzou and the other two, I mean. They didn’t want to hurt anyone – it wasn’t their choice to do this.”

“There’s always a choice,” Sandaime said. “Speaking of choices, Kakashi, I don’t know what possessed you to divulge their ANBU status to two shinobi who have _nowhere near_ that level of clearance, but I sincerely hope you won’t display that level of misjudgement again.”

“He didn’t tell us they were ANBU,” Iruka said quickly. “I figured it out.”

“With a little help, I’m sure,” Bear muttered.

Kakashi wondered how she was feeling about the situation. She must know Team Phoenix – must have worked with at least one of them before, maybe even considered them her friends. But if she was upset, she wasn’t giving anything away.

It seemed as though Naruto’s patience had finally given out. He stepped forward, shoulders squared.

“Someone tell me what’s going on! Why did those ANBU go bad just because their friend came back from the dead?” He cast what he probably thought was a subtle glance towards Kakashi. “Is that what happens when people come back to life? They become bad?”

“No, of course not,” Iruka said instantly. “The only bad person is the woman who killed Miho-san. And because of the seals, she has to do what her killer tells her.”

Naruto looked at Kakashi.

“That’s why Kakashi-sensei did what you told him before?”

Iruka bit his lip, but Kakashi wasn’t sore about that. There’d been a knife at Iruka’s throat.

“Yeah, it’s kind of a problem,” Kakashi said. “But, you know, you don’t have to be scared of me. I’m still the same person, just with fewer vital signs.”

Hesitantly, Naruto stepped around Iruka, abandoning his human shield. Kakashi stood still as he approached. He hadn’t known his other two students for all that long, but Naruto had been part of Iruka’s life long before then, and therefore part of Kakashi’s life. The wariness in Naruto’s every step hurt more than he’d thought it would.

Once Naruto was standing in front of him, he solemnly lifted Kakashi’s shirt and poked Kakashi in his seal-covered stomach, as though performing an important test, the purpose of which Kakashi couldn’t begin to fathom.

“You’re not really cold,” Naruto said suspiciously. “I mean, you’re kind of chilly, but I thought dead people were meant to be really cold.”

“I’m room temperature?”

Naruto let the shirt drop.

“Do you want to eat anyone’s brain?”

“Can’t say the thought is that appealing. And before you ask, I don’t drink blood either.”

“If you bite me will I become undead too?”

“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that. Last I checked, death wasn’t infectious.”

By this point, Naruto seemed almost disappointed.

“Don’t you do anything cool?”

“Naruto, don’t be rude,” Iruka scolded.

“I have to say, Iruka,” Sandaime said, “you’re taking this much better than I’d hoped. I’d have thought you’d be more upset that the book’s gone.”

Iruka shrugged. “I still have all my notes. Just because the book’s gone doesn’t mean I have to stop working. The killer made all her notes in the book itself and then lost everything, so I learnt from her mistakes.”

“Was there anything in those notes that could identify her?”

“She was using Konoha shorthand and had an intimate knowledge of high-class seals – she must have done some research with the Nara clan at some point, she referenced their scrolls a few times.”

“And you’re sure it’s a woman?” Bear asked.

“Tenzou and Miho-san kept saying ‘she’. So if I were you, I’d look into female researchers who’ve been out of the village for the last few weeks.”

Sandaime nodded. “I’ll have someone look into that, and I’m also going to increase your ANBU guard. I don’t want any of you trying to look for Team Phoenix and if they try to contact you, you need to tell ANBU immediately. They might not be interested in you now they have what they came for, but we can’t assume they won’t come back.”

“What about Naruto?” Iruka asked.

“I’m staying with Iruka-sensei,” Naruto said without missing a beat. He turned to Iruka. “You don’t have any more excuses to kick me out. I already know what’s going on now.”

“It would be easier to have you all in one place,” Sandaime agreed.

“That’s fine,” Iruka said slowly, “but is it really safest for him to stay with us?”

“As well as increasing the watch on your building, we can re-route more patrols through that area,” Bear suggested. “Your flat is about to become one of the most secure places in the village.”

“Then it’s settled,” Sandaime said with a sense of finality. “You can keep working while ANBU hunt down Team Phoenix and Miho’s killer.”

As they were leaving the office, Naruto looked up at Kakashi again.

“Don’t you have any cool undead powers to fight bad guys with?”

“Guess I could punch them with my super strength,” Kakashi offered. Naruto’s eyes lit up.

“That’s _awesome_.”

  


* * *

  


When Asuka came into the kitchen, she was followed by a woman Tenzou recognised as an archives worker who was dating one of Kawaguchi’s friends. Jun looked startled to see a stranger in their midst, but Tenzou was too used to seeing Kawaguchi in henges to assume it was anyone else.

“Well?” Asuka demanded.

“We got the book,” Miho said. “I put it in your room.”

“Excellent.” She held out a hand and Kawaguchi passed her a sealing scroll. “And we picked up almost everything on my shopping list, so you’ll be happy to hear that I can begin working on a way to free you from these pesky commands.”

“So kind of you,” Kawaguchi said dryly. “I’m going to go change back.”

He’d need to change clothes before he dropped the henge or he’d end up ripping the seams of the women’s shinobi uniform he was currently wearing.

“I’ll come with you,” Tenzou said. “Your finger will need splinting again.”

“Jun can do that,” Asuka said. “I want you and Miho to give me a mission report.”

Kawaguchi caught Tenzou’s eye and minutely raised an eyebrow before turning and leaving the room with Jun in tow. He’d noticed too – that Asuka was keeping the two of them from being alone together.

“Kakashi and Iruka were there,” Tenzou said. There was no point trying to hide it when Miho had to answer all questions honestly. “They saw our faces.”

“Well, that was careless,” Asuka said sharply. “Miho, tell me everything.”

Miho delivered the report dispassionately, as though speaking to the Hokage after an ANBU mission. That was something else Tenzou had noticed since Asuka had pulled them all into her plans – that when Miho was responding to a command, she did so with no trace of reluctance or hesitance. That only came after, once the damage was done.

When Miho mentioned that Kakashi had also been undead, Asuka stopped her with an exclamation.

“Iruka-kun used the seals?”

“That’s right.”

Asuka leaned against the kitchen counter and let out a low whistle. “You know, he was the only student I ever took on. Such a skilled boy, and so bold. He used to make traps and test them on ANBU – before your day, I imagine, must be at least ten years ago now. But to figure out the seals so quickly and implement them successfully – I didn’t think he was that good. He’s come a long way in the past six years.”

“And I bet he didn’t have to practice by killing people first,” Tenzou said.

“He got lucky. He wanted to bring back the right sort of person.”

Tenzou remembered the elaborate trap Asuka had set up to catch an ANBU.

“Why didn’t the seals work on the villagers?”

Asuka shrugged. “I’d need to do more testing, but my hypothesis is that the subject’s chakra pathways need to be developed to a certain extent before they can power the seals. In that case, they wouldn’t work on civilians.”

Shukunegi only had one shinobi, but Asuka had needed Jun’s expertise so couldn’t kill him. Having an ANBU team show up to investigate the murders must have been a blessing in disguise.

“So those villagers died for nothing,” Miho said.

Asuka frowned at her. “I don’t take any pleasure in killing. If I’d figured it out sooner, I wouldn’t have killed so many, but needs must, I’m afraid.”

“Why are you doing this?” Tenzou asked. “What are you even hoping to achieve? You said you wanted to cure Miho – or at least take the commands off her and give her a functioning chakra system. Why?”

Asuka tapped her fingernails on the counter, her mouth in a thin, measured line.

“Let me show you,” she said. “Miho, think about the last thing you remember from when you were alive. Regain your memories from that moment until you bled out in the cottage.”

Miho’s hand flew to her throat, gripping at the material of the thin scarf wound around it. She closed her eyes and made a choked, pained sound. Tenzou was by her side in an instant, a hand on her arm.

There were footsteps from the corridor and then Kawaguchi appeared in the doorway, looking like himself again. He took one look at Miho and rounded on Asuka.

“What the fuck did you do to her?”

“I’m letting her remember her death,” Asuka said. “Tell them what happened.”

“I found the trapdoor to the basement,” Miho gasped. “I jumped down. There was a girl there, the missing girl – she was still alive, so I tried to go to her, but something happened to the floor. Some trap – I couldn’t see anything, but my feet stuck to the ground and I fell, and then my knees stuck, and my arms. Every part of my that touched the floor, like it was covered in glue.”

“It’s called spider web chakra,” Asuka said. “I created it myself. It sticks to every chakra source except the signature that created it.”

“The girl was stuck too,” Miho said. “And then – then someone else came down. It was you.” She looked at Asuka with wide eyes, one hand still at her throat, the other clenched around the counter behind her. “You snapped the girl’s neck and then you took a knife and –” She stopped, face twisting.

“And slit your throat,” Asuka finished. “How did you feel, trapped like a rat and about to die?”

“Helpless. Frightened.”

“Stop it,” Tenzou snapped.

“And how did you feel in the moments when you were bleeding and knew nobody could save you?”

“It hurt.” Miho was staring at the floor as though she could see her own body there, bleeding in spurts from the neck and struggling against the invisible bonds holding her down next to the village girl’s corpse. “I could feel the blood splashing on my face, on the ground beneath me. I knew I was dying, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to live! I wanted someone to save me and knew that no one could. It was the worst thing – the most terrifying thing.”

Kawaguchi put an arm around her and pulled her to him, and Miho buried her face in his shoulder. Tenzou took a step towards Asuka, his pulse pounding with rage.

“Is there a point to making her suffer?” he ground out.

Asuka’s face was wiped clean of expression. “One more question.”

“No! You’re going to stop –”

“Miho,” Asuka said, speaking over him. “If I slit your throat again right now, would you feel the same way?”

“No,” Miho said, her voice muffled against Kawaguchi’s shirt. “Because it wouldn’t hurt and it wouldn’t bleed. And I’d know it couldn’t kill me.”

“You wanted to know why I was doing this,” Asuka said, eyes on Tenzou. “That’s why.”

She picked up the sealing scroll and left the room without a glance back.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Tenzou asked the empty space she’d left behind.

  


* * *

  


There was barely any evidence in Iruka’s hallway that a struggle had taken place there a mere hour and a half ago. There were a few spots of blood on the floor where Bear had been lying and the shoes lined up along the side of the hallway had been kicked out of their neat row, but that was all. Iruka bent down and straightened the shoes before toeing off his own pair and going into the kitchen to get a cloth for the blood.

Naruto was still interrogating Kakashi about how it felt to be dead, and he pulled Kakashi after him into the lounge while Iruka knelt on the floor and rubbed circles into the linoleum.

Outside, there were three ANBU surrounding the building, hidden away in crannies of the neighbouring apartment blocks. They didn’t make Iruka feel any safer, but then he hadn’t felt unsafe to begin with. He was aware that he should be disturbed – had a right to be after his home had been invaded and a knife held to his throat – but even when it had been happening he’d felt somehow distanced from it, as though they were actors performing in a play, mouthing the words but suffering no real consequences of their actions.

The red from the floor smudged onto the dirty white of the cloth. Iruka touched it lightly with a finger and wondered if it would stain. He hoped Bear was all right; he suspected that she was at least a couple of years younger than him, maybe more. It seemed awfully young for someone in a position of such responsibility.

He put the cloth to soak in the kitchen sink, and became aware that Naruto’s chatter had quieted in the other half of the room. He half turned and found Naruto standing awkwardly by the breakfast bar, watching him. Behind him, Kakashi was sitting quietly on the sofa.

“Iruka-sensei,” Naruto said, “I’m sorry for yelling at you before.”

They hadn’t seen each other since Iruka had asked Naruto to leave and Naruto had left in tears. Iruka reached out and softly carded a hand through Naruto’s hair.

“I’m sorry too. It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you what was going on, but we weren’t allowed. I thought it would be best if you weren’t here – I didn’t want to keep lying to you.”

“Do you mind that I’m here now? I mean, I’m just here because Sandaime-sama said so, not because you asked me to be.”

His voice was so quiet. Iruka pulled him into a tight hug and Naruto’s arms readily came up to squeeze him back.

“You remember why you have a room here?” Iruka asked.

“Because your home is my home,” Naruto said into his chest, repeating the words Iruka had told him when he’d first transformed his study into a second bedroom.

“That’s right. And that’ll never stop being true, even if we fight every now and then.”

Across from them, Kakashi watched, and Iruka looked up and caught his eye. He wanted to tell Kakashi that this was his home too, but maybe that was too much. Kakashi had his own home; he hadn’t chosen to move in and it was only temporary. But Iruka wanted to pretend it wasn’t, just for a while. It was nice to think of the three of them living here, sharing a home and acting like a family.

Kakashi pulled his mask down, safely hidden behind Naruto’s back, so that Iruka could see his smile. When Naruto finally released him, Iruka went over to the couch and sat down right by Kakashi’s side, and Kakashi wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close and placed a cloth-covered kiss on his cheek.

The moment felt like a memory, like something nostalgic and safe. It gave Iruka the strangest urge to cry.

 

Later that afternoon, Kakashi found himself sitting shirtless in Iruka’s living room while Iruka examined the seals on his back and compared them to his notes. It was the last section Iruka needed to check for mistakes before he started trying to modify them, and Hawk had also turned up with a small pile of reference books and scrolls Iruka had requested.

“I couldn’t find everything you’d asked for,” he’d said as Iruka had looked them over critically. “Some of the items on your list were missing. The archives workers are trying to track them down, but honestly we think someone might have stolen them. They haven’t been checked out on the system.”

Iruka’s finger lightly traced the path of a character over his shoulder blades and Kakashi tried not to lean into the touch. Something felt different about the way Iruka touched him. When Naruto had prodded him or when Gai had hugged him, there’d been sensation but it was muted. With Iruka, instead of nothing there was decidedly a _something_ – a feeling that was entirely familiar and completely foreign at the same time. Kakashi couldn’t work out what it was.

“Sorry, this must be boring,” Iruka said behind him.

Naruto had got bored of watching them long ago and retired to his bedroom to read comic books. Kakashi had taken the opportunity to tug down his mask even though Iruka couldn’t currently see his face. He’d got used to not wearing it in Iruka’s house.

“Actually, it’s quite soothing,” Kakashi said. The finger on his back twirled around a spiral. “Though it’s a good thing I’m not ticklish anymore.”

Iruka placed a kiss on the back of his neck and Kakashi hummed in contentment.

“Are you really OK?” Iruka asked quietly. “After what happened with Tenzou and Miho-san, I’m surprised you’re so calm.”

“I’m not calm,” Kakashi admitted. “But I don’t see what I can do for them except to let ANBU know they need help.” He didn’t point out that he no longer had chakra or the sharingan to power him through a search and rescue mission. “Don’t get me wrong, I wish I could do something for them, and I’m worried I did the wrong thing by telling Tenzou that I’d died, but I trust ANBU to find them.”

“If you hadn’t told him, he’d have figured it out very quickly. He’s been around Miho-san for long enough to have learnt which signs to look for.”

“Yeah, maybe. I just feel like I made things worse for him. Not to mention how he’s going to feel when he figures out I told ANBU.”

“Unless ANBU saves him,” Iruka pointed out. “They’ll want to help, I’m sure. They’re his friends.”

Iruka’s finger traced down the curve of Kakashi’s spine before branching off onto his lower back.

“Do you have any idea who could have killed Miho?” Kakashi asked. “You know a lot of the seals experts in Konoha, right? You didn’t recognise the handwriting in the book or anything?”

“If I’d seen some of their seals I might have recognised the signature,” Iruka said. “Every seals user has their own habits for drawing seals – little quirks distinct enough to narrow down the field. But I don’t really see much actual writing from other seals users.”

“You don’t know anyone who’s supposed to be out on some research mission right now?”

Iruka’s finger paused as he thought.

“No one comes to mind. As a community, we don’t get out much. If we need a book or a scroll from another village, we can send a chuunin team to fetch it. Saves time, and depending on the type of research, there’s funding available for that kind of mission.”

It sounded similar to the mission Kakashi had been on when he’d died.

“But that’ll make it easier to figure out who it is, right? If most of the seals experts are here and accounted for.”

A quiet thud came from Naruto’s room and Kakashi tensed, a hand on his mask ready to pull it up, but there was no sound of the bedroom door opening, and after a moment he let his arm drop.

“It might be easy to figure out who it is, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be easy to catch,” Iruka said. He traced one last figure near Kakashi’s hip and then his hand fell away. Kakashi turned around to see Iruka setting his notes down on the coffee table. “After Asuka-sensei left, Sandaime-sama tried to track her down several times, but could never find her. Seals masters may not be that strong, on the whole, but we know a lot of tricks. We’re good at the soft skills – henges, chakra control, trap building.”

“All the skills you need to run and hide.” Kakashi pulled his shirt back over his head. He didn’t like leaving his seals on display for too long.

“Exactly. Seals are best used from the shadows, after all.”

Kakashi had done missions with seals support, although not with Iruka. Seals users were generally chuunin, but those who practised in the field were often deployed as support members to jounin or mixed squads. Their role wasn’t to engage in direct combat but to use their skills for other purposes. From securing areas with traps to taking out the enemy from the shadows to supporting active shinobi during battle from the side-lines with well-aimed barriers to protect the combatants. There were few things that frustrated an enemy more than not being able to land a direct hit.

“Why did Asuka leave Konoha?” Kakashi asked. “I heard she packed her things and slipped away in the middle of the night, but she must have said something to you, right? You were still her student at the time.”

Iruka shook his head. “She didn’t say anything to me. As far as I know, she didn’t speak to anyone. But I think it had something to do with her father.”

“Why, did something happen with him?”

“He died,” Iruka said softly. “He was a retired shinobi – the only family Asuka-sensei had left. About six months before, he’d been diagnosed with lung cancer. It was terminal. It had gone way beyond the treatment stage, so Asuka-sensei moved back in with him and took care of him until he passed away. I barely saw her during the last two or three months when he could no longer look after himself at all.”

“That’s awful.” Kakashi’s own mother had died from an illness, but he’d been too young to understand at the time. He couldn’t imagine how awful it must be to watch a loved one fade away. “But I don’t understand why it would make her leave.”

Iruka sighed softly and leaned back against the cushions.

“All I know is that she was having a really hard time accepting the fact that he was dying. I remember something she said to me, close to the end, just before she cancelled our lessons. 'Shinobi aren’t supposed to die like this.' She left Konoha the day after his funeral.”

“And you haven’t heard from her at all since then?”

“No. I don’t even know if she’s still alive. It’s a shame – she was such a good teacher. More than that, she was a good person.” Iruka brought his legs up beneath him on the couch, curling up comfortably. “A little arrogant, maybe, and very proud, but she reeled me back in when I was out of control. She helped focus me and show me my potential.”

“Guess I have her to thank for saving me the embarrassment of being caught in a second ANBU trap.”

Iruka smiled and leaned in to kiss Kakashi’s jaw. Kakashi noticed again that strange yet familiar feeling at the touch of his lips. This time he must have frowned, because Iruka hesitated and cast him a worried look.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, exactly. It’s just that every time you touch me, I feel something, and I can’t work out what it is.”

“It doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“No, no, nothing like that.”

He took Iruka’s hand and squeezed it, trying to figure out what to call the feeling that prickled at his otherwise unresponsive nerves.

“Your hand is cold,” Iruka said, and placed his other palm over the back of Kakashi’s hand, rubbing it between his own. The action sparked recognition, and Kakashi felt like he’d slotted a puzzle piece into the perfect hole.

“I can feel you,” he breathed. “Iruka. You’re _warm_.”

  


* * *

  


Since Asuka had returned to the compound, she and Jun had been holed up in the dining room, books and scrolls spread over the table. Tenzou was currently searching through the house for a first aid kit, and sincerely hoped that now they had the book and reference materials, Asuka wouldn’t be sending them out on any more errands. He opened the bathroom cabinet and found a small box with a green cross on the front and withdrew it victoriously.

Miho and Kawaguchi were in the master bedroom where he’d left them, sitting together on the bed and talking in low voices, even though Asuka was on the other side of the building. They’d colonised this room as their space; the rest of the house felt as though it belonged to Asuka. The women’s uniform Kawaguchi had worn earlier was lying abandoned on the floor, and the dressing table was covered in freshly sharpened weapons.

Tenzou sat down on Kawaguchi’s other side and opened the medical kit.

“I knew he’d have one somewhere,” he said. “Kakashi’s got that much sense, at least.”

“It feels weird to be living in his house,” Miho said. “Eating at his table, using his shower. Sitting in his parents’ bedroom and watching you two sleep.”

“Now you’re just being creepy,” Kawaguchi said.

Tenzou found the small tube of salve he’d been looking for and gestured for Kawaguchi to hold out his injured hand. Jun had splinted it again earlier, but the damage was done. The skin was inflamed and the joint was swollen. It looked painful, and Tenzou wished he knew more medical jutsu. It had taken him too long to consider that maybe there was something in the compound that could help, but better late than never.

“This should bring down the swelling,” he said, smoothing some of the cream over Kawaguchi’s skin as lightly as he could. He felt the muscles in Kawaguchi’s hand jump as he fought the instinct to jerk away.

“Thanks. You know, I never thought I’d say this, but I’m really looking forward to going to the hospital.”

Tenzou snorted, but Miho was watching them with a grim expression. She’d been quiet for a long time after Asuka had made her remember her own death, and Tenzou and Kawaguchi had been trying their best to keep her head out of those memories.

“Miho,” Tenzou said quietly, “did Asuka tell you to stop us from leaving the compound?”

Miho nodded. “She said to break your legs if you tried to leave when she hadn’t ordered you to.”

Kawaguchi hummed thoughtfully. “You know, there are two of us and one of you. And we have chakra. If we could restrain you and take you to Iruka-sensei, everything would be much easier for all of us.”

Tenzou had been thinking something similar. Now that they had the cipher and another expert who understood the seals, it would be better for them to steal the book back and take everything to Iruka. If he was right in thinking that Asuka currently wasn’t at full strength, all they had to do was keep Miho out of the picture for long enough to incapacitate Asuka and call ANBU.

“Did Jun-san tell you about the cipher?” he asked. Kawaguchi nodded. “He also said she’s been storing chakra to work another set of seals. We have to act soon while she’s weakened, before she gets the chance to move first.”

“Why not now?” Kawaguchi asked. “She’s distracted by victory – she thinks she has all the power and won’t be expecting a mutiny.”

A smooth movement caught Tenzou’s eye and he saw Miho snag a kunai from Kawaguchi’s weapons pouch. He leapt off the bed, yanking Kawaguchi after him just in time for them to avoid the wide arc of the blade.

Miho crouched on the bed, ready to attack again.

“Shit,” Kawaguchi cursed. “Of course she’s been ordered not to let us plot against Asuka. Guess it really is now or never.”

Tenzou nodded and started flashing through hand signs, but Miho lunged at him, aiming a roundhouse kick at his arms. Kawaguchi flung himself forwards, blocking the blow but unable to stop the sheer power behind it. He crashed into the dresser, and Miho aimed a follow-up punch at Tenzou, but it was too late. The wooden floor warped upwards, spiralling branches around her legs and tugging her to the ground, and then more tendrils wrapped around her body, pinning her. Even Miho’s enhanced strength was no good to her when she was flat on her back, unable to use it.

“You OK?” Tenzou asked.

Kawaguchi had picked himself up and was rubbing his side where he’d collided with the dresser.

“Yeah. She packs much more of a punch now, though. And that’s really saying something.”

On the ground, Miho was straining against her bonds, but Tenzou had made the wooden ropes thick and solid.

“You have to leave,” she gritted out. “If I get free I’m going to kill you.”

“We will,” Tenzou said. He turned to Kawaguchi. “Just remember we can’t kill Asuka. We have to take her alive.”

“Got it.”

The door opened and Tenzou brought his hands up, but it was Jun who nervously stepped inside. His eyes widened when he saw Miho thrashing on the floor.

“Where’s Asuka?” Kawaguchi asked.

“Right here.”

Before Tenzou could move, there was a knife at Jun’s throat. Asuka stood behind him, surveying the room. Miho lay on the ground between her and Tenzou, and Kawaguchi was at the back of the room, still standing next to the dresser.

“Looks like you two have been misbehaving,” Asuka said. She glanced at Miho. “Tell me why you attacked them.”

“They were planning to hurt you and take me and the book to ANBU,” Miho said.

The piece of paper with the cipher was still in Tenzou’s pocket. He hoped against hope that Miho wouldn’t mention it.

“How naughty,” Asuka said. “You can’t get the staff these days. But why now, I wonder? After you and Tenzou went through so much trouble to bring me the book only a few hours ago. Seems like a strange time for a revolution.”

“That’s why it’s the perfect time,” Kawaguchi said. “You wouldn’t have seen it coming. You lost your power over us when we found out about Iruka-sensei. Why would we need you when there’s someone just as good who won’t try to murder us?”

Asuka laughed, distracted from her interrogation.

“Iruka-kun may be good, but he’s not that good. There’s a reason why I’m known as the best, even now.”

They were at an impasse. If Tenzou moved to attack, Asuka might kill Jun. But if she killed him, she’d have no one left to hide behind.

Asuka looked from one of them to the other, calculating.

“You’re still hiding something,” she said. “Miho, tell me what they’re trying to keep from me.”

If Tenzou hadn’t been watching Asuka so intently, he would have closed his eyes in despair.

“Jun-san knows his father’s code,” Miho said. “He gave Tenzou the cipher.”

Asuka dug the knife further into Jun’s skin and a drop of blood rolled down towards his collar bone.

“All this time,” Asuka hissed. “You’ve been lying to me _all this time_. Even when I took your daughter. If you’d told me in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to kill her.”

Jun closed his eyes. He didn’t try to struggle. Once he might have been a shinobi who could put up a fight, but he was ten years out of practice. Tenzou didn’t dare to hope he could save himself.

“Yua’s dead?” Jun asked. His voice trembled.

“Of course she’s dead! The smartass over there was right – I killed her first.”

She was caught up in her fury, her eyes on Jun, and Tenzou brought his hands together at the same time something sharp whizzed past his head.

The barrier materialised right through Tenzou’s branches, splintering them before they could wrap around Asuka’s wrist. Above them, Kawaguchi’s shuriken pinged off the barrier and clattered to the floor.

Asuka raised her left hand, which had been shielded behind Jun’s back, and showed them the seal she’d been holding since she stepped into the room. The barrier itself was a ball barrier, which wasn’t dome-shaped like the usual kind, but curved under her feet, forming a protective sphere around her.

Tenzou made more hand signs, and a wooden spike slammed into the barrier at an angle from the ground, but although it was ball-shaped, it didn’t move an inch. He gritted his teeth but didn’t try again.

“It may look like it’ll roll away, but this thing’s solid,” Asuka said. “What do you take me for, an amateur?”

Their failed attack seemed to have reined in her temper, but she was still on edge. Her hand was clenched too tightly around the kunai.

“You can’t hurt me,” she said. “I haven’t spent a lifetime working on defensive strategy for nothing. Free Miho and give her the cipher or I’ll kill Jun.”

“Do you think we’re stupid?” Kawaguchi scoffed. “If Tenzou frees her, she’s going to kill us.”

“No, she won’t,” Asuka said. “Miho, stop struggling. You’re not going to hurt your teammates unless they try and hurt me.”

Miho let her body go limp. She was watching Tenzou with wide eyes and as their gazes locked she subtly shook her head. Tenzou didn’t need her to tell him – he didn’t feel like he’d lost control yet.

“You can’t kill him,” Tenzou said. “If you don’t have him as a hostage, you have no way to control us. Even if you can defend yourself, you can’t stop Kawaguchi and me from leaving and fetching ANBU. You’re not strong enough.”

Asuka snorted and shook her head.

“Do you really think I’d let you come into this compound without first trapping every inch of it?” Asuka asked. “Oh, I could stop you all right, but I’d have to kill you, and I’d rather not do that yet.” Tenzou couldn’t tell if she was bluffing.

“Prove it,” Kawaguchi said. His voice was tight.

“Well, if you insist.”

A tightly controlled chakra flare activated a seal hidden somewhere in the room. Tenzou tried to move, anticipating some attack, but found that his feet were stuck to the floor. He overbalanced and fell, and the hand he used to catch himself stuck to the ground, along with his knees. Behind him, Kawaguchi swore as he realised he was also stuck, catching himself against the dresser as he stumbled. Tenzou swallowed hard against the lump of dread in his throat.

“When will you learn to stop underestimating me?” Asuka asked. “You see, if I wanted to kill you, I could. But I’d much rather have your cooperation for a little longer, so why don’t we play a different game? Give Miho the cipher and I’ll let you save Jun.”

The knife flashed across Jun’s neck, ripping through the flesh at the side of his throat. Blood spurted out of the wound, splashing Jun’s shocked face as he cried out. Tenzou made a sharp movement and felt his heartrate spike. Asuka hadn’t severed the carotid, but she’d nicked it, and if Jun didn’t get help fast, he would still bleed out.

The spider web chakra deactivated and Tenzou scrambled to his feet.

“You’re a good ANBU, Tenzou,” Asuka said, calm despite the man jerking in her hold. “You won’t let an innocent man die. Or will you?”

Jun was clutching at his neck, trying to apply pressure, but the blood was gushing out rhythmically between his fingers.

“Please,” he gasped.

During Tenzou’s ANBU career he’d taken a lot of risks, but betting a man’s life was beyond him. If Asuka was telling the truth about her traps, she could afford to let Jun die. Tenzou brought his hands together and Miho’s bonds retracted back into the floor.

“Don’t,” Kawaguchi snapped, too late.

“Such a good boy,” Asuka breathed. “Now give her the cipher. Miho, you keep that safe for me.”

Tenzou frantically dug into his pocket and passed the folded sheet of paper to Miho, who placed it into her own trouser pocket.

“Let me heal him,” Tenzou demanded.

“Well, I suppose you might as well.”

The barrier came down and Asuka pushed Jun forwards where he collapsed into a heap near Tenzou’s feet. A shimmer of chakra signified the barrier being reset, but Tenzou wasn’t paying attention. He dropped to his knees, hands already working through the medical jutsu, and Miho pulled Jun’s hands away from his neck so that Tenzou could get to the wound, pulsing healing chakra into Jun’s skin to stem the bleeding.

“Now what?” Kawaguchi asked. He hadn’t moved, still trying to calculate a way to gain the upper hand. Tenzou didn’t think he could. His hands were steady at Jun’s throat, but only because he willed them to be.

“Now it’s time for your punishment,” Asuka said. “How’s Jun? Still dying?”

Tenzou pulled his hands back an inch. The blood was coming in a trickle now; he’d managed to restore the artery wall.

“No, he’s stable.”

“Excellent. That means you can kill him.”

Tenzou jerked his gaze up to Asuka. “What?”

“You can’t make him,” Miho growled, standing between Asuka and two figures on the floor as though she thought she could protect them. “And if you make me, they’ll stop me.”

Asuka let the knife hang by her side. The blade was wet with Jun’s blood.

“Have you already forgotten about my traps?” Asuka asked. “Either you kill Jun or Miho will pick you off one at a time. That’s your choice, Tenzou. I don’t need him anymore now I have the cipher.” Her eyes were hard as she watched Jun gasp roughly on the floor. “And I’m so very angry with you all.”

Jun gripped at Tenzou’s shirt.

“Please don’t do this,” he gasped. “My family needs me.”

“Miho, if Jun isn’t dead in the next twenty seconds, you kill him.”

“Tenzou, don’t,” Miho said desperately. “If you cross this line, you can’t go back to the other side! There’s no way you can justify this to ANBU. They might forgive you for everything else, but not for murder!”

“And then kill Kawaguchi,” Asuka added. “And we’ll see how we feel about Tenzou. You can slaughter your teammates just like I killed you! Won’t that be fun? Ten seconds, by the way.”

There was no choice. Numbly, Tenzou drew a kunai from his pouch. Jun scrambled across the floor, crawling and slipping through his own blood, and Tenzou rose to follow him.

Something whizzed past his hip, and Jun howled as the knife hit him in the thigh, burying itself in his flesh. He yanked a hand free to grasp the knife and instinctively pulled it free. Blood spurted out, and Tenzou saw the exact moment Jun realised, too late, that he should have left the knife where it was. It had severed his femoral artery with surgical precision.

Tenzou whirled around and saw Kawaguchi pick up his sword from the dresser. His face was blank.

Jun’s leg collapsed under him, and he clutched with both hands at his thigh, trying to stem the blood that gushed rhythmically out of the wound as it had done his throat, wetting his hands and spattering the floor and Miho’s legs. He was making choked, panicked noises, and didn’t see Kawaguchi as he silently crossed the room, sword clenched tightly in his fist.

The blade whistled as it came down, and then Jun’s head rolled away from the body, blood spraying from the neck and pattering over the tatami. There was a moment of silence as the spray slowed to a trickle.

“Well, that was dramatic,” Asuka commented.

Kawaguchi let the sword clatter to the floor.

“I don’t trust you around corpses,” he said flatly.

He started towards the doorway, and for a moment Tenzou thought he was going to try and attack Asuka, but she must have seen something in his face because she dropped the barrier and simply stepped aside. Kawaguchi passed through into the corridor, walking away without a glance at Tenzou or Miho.

“I love this team,” Asuka murmured. “You’re all so prone to self-sacrifice. It really warms my heart.”

Tenzou unfroze and went to follow Kawaguchi out of the room, but Asuka moved back into the doorway, blocking his path.

“Get out of my way.”

“Better leave him alone. After all, he just killed a man for your sake – he might not want to see your face for a while.” She looked down at the blood on her shirt with distaste. “And I hope this dissuades you from any more silly plans to go running to ANBU. How much time do you reckon Kawaguchi’ll get for first degree murder? Life in prison? Or would it be a death penalty for sure on top of the treason he’s already committed by following your orders? I’m sure you know more about the law than I do.”

Tenzou swallowed painfully. The violence had been knocked out of him as effectively as it had been knocked out of Kawaguchi.

“Now,” Asuka added, “you have a job to do here. You two can clean up this mess and get rid of the body. Bury it in the compound somewhere. I’m going to get back to work.”

She patted her pocket where she’d stored the cipher and then turned and left, shutting the door behind her. Tenzou turned to Miho, who was still standing over Jun’s body. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've rewritten parts of that last scene so many times orz. Many thanks to MyThoughtBubbles for being my action scene expert and giving me feedback, and to Serie11 for her invaluable beta-ing skills as always <3
> 
> EDIT: Got an email literally straight after posting this that means I'm going to have to go on hiatus for a while. So sorry about this, guys, but it's for a very positive and exciting reason. Basically I've been writing an original novel and although it's incomplete, a literary agent has taken notice and wants me to finish it. Meaning there's a chance he'll represent me and get me published!! (Lol is this real life? What is happening?) So I'm dropping everything and focusing all of my energy on my original writing for the foreseeable future. However, I WILL finish this story, I just can't say when. Thanks so much for reading this far <3


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